


Jakwagon: Act 1

by DrowningComic, Griffinswings



Series: Jakwagon [1]
Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningComic/pseuds/DrowningComic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griffinswings/pseuds/Griffinswings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deeply explores the world and characters of the Jak'n'Dax universe through the eyes of canon and original characters, with headcanons and plot extensions extrapolated from extensive world research. Includes small AU elements, adventure, romance, comedy, suspense, and political intrigue! Full 9 part story planned, updates every other Monday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

                               

 

Three gunshots.  
Tawniey lurched up. She scrambled for her side, struggling against her restraints-- groping blindly for the warm, wet fabric that she knew she would find. But she didn’t. The flesh beneath her hand was whole and sound. As her vision came into focus, she realized that she was not looking up at the gunmetal skies of Haven city, but the dingy gray of her apartment walls.

It wasn’t real.

It never was.

The calendar Kendryk had given her was pinned to the wall at the foot of her bed: a silent reminder of how much she had overcome, and how long she had endured. The series of bold scribbles in thick black marker led her to the current date.  It was now the fourth of a month called Etsion, in the year 297 EM. Tawniey had learned that the phrase meant 297 years after the death of Mar, the founder of Haven City.

She gradually rose to a seat on her bed, taking care to untangle herself from the sheets. There were no notes in the small white box that bore the present date. Like the rest of the month, it was fairly empty. With no scheduled jobs to do or clients to meet, she supposed she would have to find something else to keep her mind occupied.

From behind the threadbare curtains, she could see day was just breaking. The misty haze of morning was still clinging to the town below. It would still be a few hours before the shopkeepers would unlock their front doors.

The guard would be changing soon.

She swiveled her legs off of the mattress until her feet touched the splintery wooden floor. Her clothes were hanging on the thin metal wire that spanned the bedroom ceiling. She carefully retrieved her boots and slipped them on. Of all of the adaptations she had made to fit into Haven City, shoes were one that she welcomed. She could not imagine traversing the scalding hot stone of main town or the sharp rocky gravel of the slums in the leather foot wrappings they had worn in Sandover. Her armor came next, it’s ruddy color seeming dull and worn in the dim lighting of her room, and she tied everything off with the long straps she sometimes wondered if she was using correctly. Nevertheless, she was now dressed and prepared for the day, wondering what it would bring her.

Her last job had proven incredibly lucrative, and the artifact hadn’t been as hard to retrieve as she’d worried. To be sure, it had taken some time for the bruises on her knees and shoulders to fade to a less conspicuous yellow tint, but then again, nobody in Haven would have looked at her twice for them. Her choice of clothing was usually the subject of their stares, and even then very few confronted her about it. She never minded even when they did, the high of adrenaline from a job well done and money in her pocket far too satisfying to let a few pointed questions ruin her mood.

Now, however, she was looking at the dregs of her haul glinting as dully in its box as her armor, and she considered them as if trying to discern a way to make the box fuller if she just stared at it long enough. A note from the frail, timid old landlady had been lying on her floor like a quiet plea for attention, and it made the contents of Tawniey’s bank feel out of place. The old woman was never mean about rent; in fact, Tawniey often mused to herself that Kendryk must have spun something truly horrific to cover for her that the worst she ever seemed to get were similar notes quietly slipped beneath her door when payment was due. Whatever it was, the woman never questioned Tawniey’s comments, no matter how obviously strange they sounded. The woman would use a voice reminiscent of a nanny to a young child when engaging in the vapid conversations between heading in or out of the complex, and it always had an air of concerned pity. Tawniey’s alibi probably involved amnesia or brain damage for such delicacy to be given in what many considered a fairly hostile part of the city, and it had the side benefit of excusing any of her frequent questions about things that born Havenites never needed answered. Whatever the story, she smiled to herself, deciding finally that if she had so little, she may as well give it where it was needed anyway. Counting the various bits and orbs until she came to their total, Tawniey realized she’d actually have something left over, and after delivering the payment to the front downstairs, she went out into the streets in search of something to keep her mind occupied.

As she opened the door of the apartment complex she was disappointed to find that the air was just as stuffy outside as it had been indoors. It was not a particularly unusual occurrence-- the odd twisting shape of the slums prevented any of Main Town’s climate control from circulating quite so far as the corner complexes. She supposed that as the sun rose and the mist broke, the weather might have become more pleasant, but the water slums around the corner would leave the air thick and damp after the noonday sun.  Tawniey decided silently that she would avoid returning home until after sundown if possible. Pulling her yellow access pass from her pocket, she began the walk to the Eastern bazaar.

Upon arrival at the first shop, Tawniey had to keep herself from pressing her nose to the glass to take it all in. There were some beautifully braided breads cooling on racks, trays of muffins beneath with bits of fruit and nuts sticking out like jewels from their tops. A few sweet rolls were curled delicately and placed in their own glass cases. Her stomach grumbled as she walked in the door. The baker smiled wearily at her.

“First customer of the day!” he said with more enthusiasm than she would have expected. “You’re in luck, it’s all fresh.”

“How much are the muffins?” Tawniey asked cheerfully.

“One bit each.” He smiled. “Or two and a half for the dozen.”

She rummaged through her side pocket in search of a coin with sharp corners, but unfortunately, the only orbs she had were whole.

“Do you have a splitter?” She asked hopefully.

“No, I’m sorry.” The baker replied. “I know Solder does but his shop won’t open for another few hours.”

Tawniey fought back a frown as she withdrew an orb from her pocket. “Well, I guess I’ll take four, then.” She said.

The baker reached out and took the orb, dropping it pleasantly into the slot on the safebox on the counter, and handed her the paper bag full of muffins in exchange. She nodded graciously and returned to the streets.

The sky had become significantly brighter, but the sun was still not in view. Despite the better part of an hour having passed, the winding path was just as empty as it had been when she had first woke. The Industrial District employees would be starting their shifts soon. If she were to leave now, she might be able to slip seamlessly into the morning trickles of workers heading to their jobs before the traffic became too heavy for the night guards to watch alone.

The night guards were Tawniey’s favorite. It was not that they were any more pleasant than those who patrolled the streets during the day-- in fact, perhaps even less so-- but rather, it was that they were typically so exhausted  from the isolation and tedium of routinely walking the empty streets that the usual vigilant and piercing stares that came from behind the bright red goggles would be altogether unfocused. The majority of bazaar theft took place around this time with little consequence, though Tawniey strongly suspected that so early in the morning, people were simply too tired to care.

As it happened, she made it to the Industrial section of the city without any notable problems, and deftly climbed the skeletal walls of the building where she would sit, watching. As she reached the top, she stopped to retrieve a small bag that had been securely tied to one of the support beams. Though this setup was more to keep the items from falling into the construction below than measures against any theft, Tawniey was pleased to find that when she opened the bag, not a single item was missing.

She pulled the binoculars and a half-full notepad from the bag before settling down with one of the muffins in her free hand, to begin her near-daily vigil. One of the nice things about this vantage point was she could see almost all the way round the Fortress depending on where she sat. Her favorite place allowed her to monitor the KG that stood by a fair-sized door which by now, she had guessed was a side entrance to the building.

Over the last two years, she had managed to painstakingly collect so little information. Her notepad had various scribbles and sketches indicating the routes of the guards, which doors were accessible to civilians, and carefully calculated reaction times to nearby events. Still, the plodding speed of her self-assigned project was enough to try her patience. At times, she wondered if it would be too late by the time she knew enough to break in.

The dull blue-grey of the sky as the sun steadily arced overhead tugged her thoughts back to the day she’d been dumped from the blinding hole of light into Haven’s dingy clutches. It had been a trip she could remember looking forward to. Though she and her friends were familiar with the small precursor warp gates, they had never seen one so large as what they had found at Gol and Maia’s citadel. It had taken weeks to retrieve all of the pieces of the gate and vehicle, and reassemble them at Keira’s lab. Tawniey remembered the eager look in Jak’s eyes when they were told that they should prepare to leave the following morning. When they all piled into the strange machine and Daxter tried to touch the screen, Tawniey could remember her heart pumping as she grinned from ear to ear. They had no way of knowing what lay ahead, and, at that time, that had been something to be excited about.

When Jak started it up, however, after their eyes had adjusted to the brilliant light of the warp gate, the sky seemed to immediately dim. The terrifying creature that appeared in the ring was unlike anything that Tawniey had ever seen before. She had only managed to get a brief look at the thing before they were hurdling through the rift. When they finally reached the other side, they were thrust onto the cold metal overpass near the fortress wall. Though Jak and Daxter had only landed a few feet away from her, Samos and Keira were nowhere to be found. She could remember Daxter’s loud complaints as she tried to keep her head from spinning, but it hadn’t been long before they were approached by a group of men in red armor.

Daxter had started to run, but the men didn’t seem interested in chasing him. They were only interested in Jak, and Tawniey had screamed something when she saw a man with wild orange hair grinning widely as Jak was swiftly made unconscious with the butt end of the guard’s gun. She didn’t have time to do anything else, her shouting having drawn the attention of the KG as they unflinchingly fired in her direction. Tawniey’s vision blurred, the faint shapes and colors of Jak being dragged away by the imposing red-armored men all she could see as shock settled in like the blood through her freshly wounded side.

The ghost of the sound of guns yanked Tawniey back to reality. Whether it was from her own memory or the guards far away and below her, she couldn’t tell, but she muttered a curse under her breath once she’d realized her mind had wandered. She felt less guilty about it lately than she had in the beginning, when she was certain every second might bring her that much closer to breaking the puzzle of the Fortress. Nowadays, it was all she could do to keep her hopes alive of ever making it in, much less bringing Jak out, and she feared the day she might sit at her post out of habit alone.

The day wore on tediously, her mind a blur of memory and tamping down self doubt when she caught sight of something different than usual  as the sun had touched down on the opposite end of the sky. It had been two years, but there was no mistaking the orange pile of fur as it leaped from a small opening in the fortress wall.

“Daxter?” she questioned aloud, desperately trying to focus her binoculars on the tiny ottsel. He was walking now towards the bazaar, and the moment he’d disappeared from her range she was scrambling to replace her supplies and climb back down.  Her legs carried her faster than they ever had to where she’d last seen him and it didn’t take long after she’d started searching to catch Daxter’s eye once she’d entered the bazaar. She even allowed herself to excitedly scoop him up into a crushing hug, despite his protests and some confused stares from other civilians.

“Daxter!” She shouted. “Where have you been?”

“If you’d _put me down_ I might actually get a chance to answer!” He squeaked, attempting to claw his way out of her grip.

“Oh! Sorry!” She said quickly releasing him. She could feel herself grinning stupidly as she watched the orange ball of fuzz brushing himself off indignantly. He had a roll of paper clenched tightly in one gloved hand.

“It’s good to see you too, Tawn, but jeez, people need to breathe.” he said finally. “What are you doing here?”

It took Tawniey a moment to keep from telling him everything she had been doing to collect information on the roof of the factory right then and there at the bazaar. Suddenly, she remembered the bag of muffins in her hand.

“Uh…. Grocery shopping.”

“Right, well, while you’ve been _grocery shopping_ , I’ve been taking care of important business. You know, the kind I can’t just tell everyone about.”

“My apartment isn’t far from here.” Tawniey offered, realizing that their current location did not lend itself to everything they had to discuss.

“Great.” Daxter answered. “Then, you lead the way.”

 

The walk back to the upper slums felt significantly shorter now that Tawniey had someone to talk to. Despite the fact that the last time they had seen each other was in a wildly different setting, they had no problems finding topics of easy chatter. By the time the conversation finally slowed, Tawniey was pulling out her access key and the door was sliding open.

“Well,” She said. “Here it is. This is home.”

Daxter hopped up onto the lumpy couch and began to scratch behind his ear with a foot.  
“Kinda small isn’t it?”

“Do you know how much this place costs?” Tawniey grumbled, setting down her bag in the entryway.

“For this dump? I dunno.” Daxter said. “300 a month.”

“Four.” She corrected. She flopped down on the couch as well with a great sigh. After a moment of quiet consideration, she reached down, drew the last two muffins from her paper bag and tossed one to Daxter. “Man I'm wishing we hadn't pooled together to trade all those orbs to Jak’s uncle. Do you know how much that is here? 90 orbs? Real orbs? Do you know where we'd be?”

“I'm guessing we wouldn't be eating yesterdays muffins in a shitty apartment.” Daxter retorted.

“I’ll have you know these are fresh muffins.” Tawniey huffed.

“Is that what the baker told you?” Daxter replied through a mouthful, “Because you got conned.”

Tawniey picked up the throw pillow from the side of the couch and tossed it at Daxter’s head, knocking him momentarily from the couch. He picked himself up and dusted off his muffin before climbing back up, catching the corner of a grin on Tawniey before she forced her mouth straight again.

“Do you know what?” He asked thoughtfully, after a moment. “I don’t even think that guy was Jak’s uncle.”

“You think so?” Tawniey replied.

“Seriously. He was kinda weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

The two rambled on for some time, laughing as they caught up with each other’s lives, but just after Daxter mentioned something about a map and the Fortress, Tawniey’s heart skipped a beat.

“Wait what?”

“Oh yeah, this yutz wanted me to ‘borrow’ some kind of chest plate or something from an old suit of armor. Frankly after gettin’ out of there should be asking for at _least_ twice as much--”

“No, no!” Tawniey was speaking fast, breathless, “You said you have a map?”

“How else would I get in and out?”

“Daxter,” Tawniey felt her hands shaking as her mouth broke into what she was certain was a maniacal grin, “Daxter, I could _kiss_ you, you actually have a _map_ of the _Fortress_!!”

The ottsel said something then that Tawniey was certain she’d feel compelled to hit him for later, but there was no time. She rushed through explaining what she’d found out from her own observations, and when the pieces had been connected, Daxter seemed just as floored.

“Are you telling me,” he huffed while trotting along at her side as she practically leapt down the stairs of the apartment complex, “that you haven’t actually seen Jak since he got nabbed by those goons?”

“Exactly,” Tawniey replied. “And I know this sounds nuts, but I just know he’s still alive and he needs our help. I saw you hop out of some kind of window or something earlier, and it gave me an idea!”

“Ooh no,” Daxter warned. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, now sounding annoyed, “I’ve had enough of that place for one day.”

Tawniey skidded to a halt before him, lowering her voice to a near whisper.  
“Come on Dax, we’ll be travelling through the air vents, and I told you it’s the only thing the KG don’t seem to check! We’ll be perfectly safe--”

“Nope. No way. Nuh-uh. Not going.”

“Not even for Jak?” she prompted sweetly, her eyes wide and imploring. Daxter huffed, kicking himself for falling at the mercy of Tawniey’s gently tremmoring bottom lip.

“Fine.” He grumbled. “But It’s only because I know if this were the other way around, Jak would probably be pulling some sort of hero bullshit, so we can’t just leave him hanging can we?”

Tawniey rose back up so elatedly that Daxter thought she might have levitated a few inches above the ground.  
“Good.” she managed.

“But we need a plan first.”

“Okay.”

“And you’ll make a good substitute shoulder. I am NOT walking back that whole way.”

“It’s a deal.”

As they made their way back up the stairs to examine the map, Tawniey thought she’d jump right out of her skin. The day had started with such boredom and misery, it was hard to believe so many good things had wandered into her midst at once. And even with the seriousness of laying out their attack plan, she could feel the smile that had crept onto her face had not left for the rest of the evening. She and Daxter were going to get Jak out. As the light filtering through her dusty windows slowly dimmed, that thought ran through Tawniey’s mind again and again, and she couldn’t wait to see the same joy and excitement in her friend’s face once they were reunited.

 

 

 

 

 

⁂

 

 

 

 

How long had it been since he had seen daylight?  
Months?  
Years?  
Jak thought that if he were to ever see sunlight again, he might be blinded by it. His deep blue eyes had adjusted to perpetual darkness of the cell, but just as he bore the scars of abuse and torture, his cell walls mirrored those marks. There were deep lines etched into the stone, carved with a thick metal spoon he had stolen one day after a meal of near-spoiled soup from the KG mess hall-- a real treat. Some of the lines were an attempt to keep track of the days; to remember that the sun set and the moon rose. To hold onto some memory of what life used to be like. That time passed in a more concrete way than weeks melding into eternity after spending too much time alone in the dark.

However there were other smaller marks that dotted the edge of this sad calendar as the result of an equally methodical but more terrible way of passing the hours. The same spoon had made them, stabbing faster and faster between Jak’s spread fingers against the wall as he wondered when and if there would ever be a round of the game where he finally would slip and make himself bleed.

Though Jak had never spoken a word to any other person in his life, he now craved conversation.  
Two years' silence had given him a voice.

Jak allowed himself to flop back onto his lumpy cot and placed his arms behind his head.  
He had just picked up a rubber band to shoot at a passing fly  when suddenly, heavy footsteps made his ears perk up.

His heart skipped a beat.  
Not again.  
They couldn't be back again. Not so soon. Not now.  
He closed his eyes as though trying to shelter himself from the approach of the nearby Guard.  
He could still feel the pain in his chest from where the dark eco was so recently forced into his body. He sat up in an attempt to untie the twisted knot that his stomach had become.

Would he black out? Be conscious through the whole thing? Or even worse--experience the temporary lapses in memory that occasionally followed, sometimes hours after they had thrust him back into his cell and locked the doors. All that ever stayed with him was a rage that felt as though it weren't quite his, and the dreamlike visions that lingered for only moments.

The bars opened with a clatter, revealing a man with a uniform red as blood and a rather threatening firearm.  
The man banged his fist loudly on the side of the cell as though to wake him up.

Jak closed his eyes.  
 _Not again. Please not again._  
But no sooner than the thought crossed his mind, he felt himself being grabbed roughly by the arm.

Jak allowed himself to be dragged out of the cell and down a flight of stairs. He knew at this point that there was little use in resisting, but he was certainly not going to make their job easier. They finally reached the platform, which was surrounded on all sides by a startling drop. The Guard forced him down onto the cool metal chair and the restraints instantly locked at the wrists and ankles.

Jak closed his eyes. He didn't want to watch as the machine whirred to life, or the forked anode lowered to begin the injection cycle.

His whole body clenched with a jolt as the process began. Dark eco traveled through his veins, leaving scorching, unbearable pain in its wake. His face contorted in agony.  
Someone was screaming. The sharp pain subsided and he realized it was his own mouth that was stretched open.  
He didn't care if he survived anymore. Death was welcome at any time to come and turn out the lights. To end the pain. His eyelids fluttered open just before the button was jammed again and the second wave hit.

Jak wasn't aware of quite when it had stopped. The next thing he knew, he was being held up by two guards, each grabbing one of his upper arms. Erol’s smooth, lilting voice was echoing through the metal chambers.

“We need this place cleaned up before the Baron comes tomorrow.”

“Yes sir.” A low voice grunted in response.

“Make sure the cells are washed and the prisoners showered. It stinks down here.”

“Yes sir.”

“This project is such a waste of time.” Erol muttered. “We’ve been at this for years and not a shred of results. At least it’s entertaining when they die on the table, but this one won’t even do that.”

Jak was being thrown back into his cell. As the bars clattered shut, he heard the voices fading into the distance until he could no longer make out what the two were saying.

His knees hit the floor with a dull thud.

Consciousness was eluding him. He had not been allowed to die this time, and now that the sharp and stabbing pain was ebbing away, he was beginning to recall that he didn't want to.  
He would survive. He would endure.

And one day... he would exact revenge.


	2. Chapter 2

                               

Being awake before dawn, and usually running on very little sleep, was not an uncommon practice for Tawniey. However, as soon as the first pale light of morning crept over the city of Haven, she was shaking Daxter awake. The ottsel practically leapt off the couch at the excited girl’s touch and voice, and he complained loudly about the hour once he’d recovered his bearings.  
“Did you even sleep at all? You could pack for three weeks in those bags.” Daxter said, staring pointedly at the dark circles beneath the other’s eyes.

“No, but I feel fine,” Tawniey answered placidly. “Come on, we’ve gotta go now if we’re going to catch the change in Guard.”

Daxter made a big show of yawning and grumbling the entire way to the Fortress, but he kept up with confirming points of the plan to infiltrate it once they were there.

“So, just to be clear,” Tawniey started, looking at the now well-marked map in her hands, “we’ll be heading in through the main vent on the Eastern Wall. That should take us--”

“In, past the barracks and toward the arsenal.” Daxter finished unenthusiastically.

“Then we’ll want to head southwest as far as we can, until we reach the hangar… which connects right to the big blank box.” 

Tawniey felt Daxter shuffle on her shoulder. 

“This plan is great and all...” he started hesitantly, “but, how can we be sure this is where they’re keeping Jak?” 

“We can’t.” She admitted. “But it makes sense. There’s no area for holding cells on this map, and yet we know that the city prison is in the fortress. They probably don’t mark it on their maps in case they get into outsider hands--just like it did. I can’t see any other reason why they would leave it blank. Hell, even the tactical library is labeled. They’re clearly not concerned with keeping secrets...”

Tawniey’s sentence stopped as the fortress wall came into view. Its height felt much more menacing than she had ever noticed before as the gravity of their plan began to hit her all at once. 

This was really happening. 

After two years of waiting, watching and hoping, she would finally know for sure. She shook out her wrists to keep them from jittering.

“Are you ready for this, Dax?” Tawniey asked quietly.

“Well, we can’t leave him in there with those KG goons, can we?”

The resolve in Daxter’s voice gave Tawniey renewed hope, and the two exchanged a silent nod before they cast one last look around the wall. A pair of bored-looking patrols stood just yards away, with more stationed at the far end of the building and above it, but otherwise the grounds were vacant. Tawniey had to keep herself from audibly gasping when it seemed like the guards had begun walking towards her and Daxter, but they turned, changing posts with a fresh pair of soldiers right on schedule. Relieved, and finally satisfied that all of the Krimzon Guard were preoccupied with their patrols, she slipped around the corner. 

She moved quickly down the narrow alley until she reached a metal air vent. The dumpster beneath it provided the most workable blind spot that she had been able to find; at the very least, it would offer cover until they were safely within the fortress walls. Climbing into it without making too much noise proved difficult, but she managed with a final “oomph” as she pulled herself over the lip.

Brushing herself off, Tawniey stood up. The air vent was capped by a thick steel grate, but it didn’t look that difficult to remove. Withdrawing a small knife from a pouch at her side, she fitted the back of the blade into the screws and began to twist them from their places. As the final screw gave way, the cover suddenly came away, and she fumbled to catch it as silently as possible. Her heart pounding, she motioned for Daxter to head in before her. She crept into the vent after the ottsel, carefully pulling the grate back into place. Using her feet and back to hold her steadily against both sides of the chute, she easily scaled the 10 foot vertical incline.

As the vent leveled out, the two stopped to catch their breath. Now that they were safely surrounded by four walls again, and out of sight, Tawniey felt her heartbeat slow. Daxter was fiddling with the top of his goggles when suddenly the dark space was illuminated by a soft bluish light. 

Daxter smirked and placed his hands on his hips, obviously pleased with himself. 

“That’s right.” he said. “Where would you be without me?”

She withdrew the map from a pouch on her belt and unfolded it in front of her, smiling.

“Still in the dark. Thanks, Dax.” She turned her attention to the red line that mazed over the piece of paper, indicating with her finger where they should head next.

“Okay, well, if this map is correct, we’ve got to keep right for as far as this vent goes. There are a couple of major connections in the air ducts near the arsenal in the center where we’ll need to switch directions and go left.” She rubbed at her forehead and folded the map again. “We don’t want to get lost in here. We were lucky to make it into the vents so easily...” 

“Yeah, well,” Daxter started, taking the lead, “don’t get all jumpy on me now. We’ve got a long way to go.”

The vents seemed to snake on for an eternity. Tawniey supposed she should be grateful for the lack of visibility to the inner fortress, but having no landmarks of any sort was making it difficult to tell exactly how far they had traveled already, or which labeled room on the map they were now closest to. The darkness around her was beginning to feel thicker, and something about the compulsory nature of her and Daxter’s silence was beginning to make every tiny creak or shuffle seem as loud as a zoomer horn. For as hard as she fought to remain optimistic while she crawled along behind Daxter, her mind fell to all of the potential faults in their plan.  
Who was to say that when they reached the big blank box on the map, that it was the prison cells? Earlier she had been certain that this was the only logical conclusion, but now she was becoming painfully aware that she didn’t know if the fortress even had a prison. Perhaps the city would simply hold guests nearer to the Palace to await visitation from the Baron or City Council for trial. Maybe they didn’t even hold trials in Haven City. Maybe they were just given a punishment by the Baron himself and then sent along on their way. Given that she hadn’t seen Daxter for the entirety of the two years that she had spent inside the city walls, was it possible that Jak had been released and she had never known it? It felt so improbable given the way that they had carried him off that day. The hostile manner of his capture didn’t leave room for any questioning. But then, the Guards that day had left her for dead on the ground. If Kendryk hadn’t found her when he did, she would have never survived. Was it possible that Jak had met a similar fate wherever the Guards had taken him?

She shook the thought from her mind, refusing to entertain the idea for even a second longer.

Not five minutes later, her faith was rewarded as the dim image of a flat wall came into view ahead. She smiled with relief and some excitement when the shadows cast by the light from Daxter’s goggles showed that the vent split in two opposite directions. Her smile faded quickly when being right upon the divide revealed that the vent to the left was considerably smaller than any person could fit.

“Man,” Daxter sighed nervously, “talk about your tight squeeze.”

“Now what...” Tawniey groaned miserably. They’d come so far, with so many concerns and potential pitfalls, she never once considered a half-size ventilation tube to be an obstacle. She glanced at Daxter, opening her mouth to ask for ideas when one suddenly struck.

“We’re splitting up.”

“ _What!?_ ”

Tawniey fumbled for the map in her pocket, yanking Daxter’s head towards it so she could see clearly. Eyes skimming rapidly over the piece of paper, her grin broadened again over her face with a sort of crazed enthusiasm.

“Daxter, I couldn’t fit in that vent if I tried, let alone be able to move, but you can. I need you to go check it out.”

“Listen, Red, we made it this far by stickin’ together. What are we supposed to do if we get lost? Especially since you’ve got the map and I’ve got the light.”

“It’s a straight shot. You only have to make a few more turns but it’s going to lead to the blank box on the map, no problem. As for me, I’ll have to feel it out but there should be another split here.” She pointed to the spot along the red line, “If I can find that it’ll dump me out into a control room. There might be something I can do from there, at least shut off some of the security trips.”

Daxter shook himself from Tawniey’s hand, frowning skeptically.

“What happens if we get caught?”

“You’re small, you can get away. And I can hold my own, I think,” Tawniey felt like she was saying it more for her own benefit than anything else, her side aching with ghost pains. When Daxter didn’t move, she turned herself in the other direction, taking the right half of the split.  
“You’re probably going to get there a little before I do, but we’ll meet up in the holding area, ok? I’ll try to go fast.”

Daxter grumbled to himself, not sparing a glance back at Tawniey before crawling down the narrow shaft, until the girl was left in near-perfect darkness. Inhaling deeply, she began her own path with one hand on the sidewall as her only guide.

 

⁂

 

Daxter wasn’t even certain which curses were flying out of his mouth as he scampered down the dark stretch of vent. 

“ _Let’s break into the fortress_ , she said. _We’ll find Jak_ , she said. _We’ll stick together the whole way, we’ll be totally safe_ , she said…” he muttered to himself. 

He supposed that they hadn’t really had a choice. The map had given no signal to the size of the vents. It could very well have been that the vents were entirely unusable and they would have had to create another plan.  
For as much as Daxter wanted to be able to wish that had been the case, he couldn’t. He had never given up on finding Jak, but until earlier that day, Daxter had been no closer to knowing where he had been taken than the day they arrived in Haven City. This was the closest he had been in two years to being able to see his best friend.  
A little more time to prepare would have been nice, especially considering how suicidal breaking into a high-security area of the fortress was sure to be, but he supposed he could only take what he was given at this point.

As he rounded a corner, he noticed that the floor of the vent was beginning to incline steeply downward. Tawniey hadn’t warned him that the vent ran over a stairwell. He glanced behind him as he ran. Sure enough, the farthest point back that he could see appeared to be a full five feet above him. As he turned his head back, however, he was even more alarmed.

There was a wall not three feet in front of his face, and what appeared to be a deep hole beneath it. 

He scrambled to grab hold of the walls of the vent as quickly as he could, digging his heels into the slick metal beneath him, but it was fruitless, and soon he found himself falling through the dark.

The light at the end of the tunnel came quickly, and he managed to skid to a stop along the sides of the walls early enough to keep himself from landing painfully on the bars that capped the vent. He released himself gracefully onto them and blew on his palms. Even through his thick leather gloves he could feel the friction burns beginning to blister. Taking a minute, he slowly lowered himself onto his stomach to get a look at his new surroundings.

The light beneath the air duct was a dingy sort of green, and hung in an industrial cage above a thick steel door with barred windows. There was a small platform directly underneath him, and it appeared to be on some sort of motorized track. Underneath that, there was a door-lined pit that seemed to go on forever. Daxter gulped involuntarily, now very thankful that the bars he had avoided hitting just seconds before were there to stop his descent through the vent.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise echoing through the chasm around him--the familiar metallic sound of footsteps as steel soled boots crossed the alloy floors. There were voices, too, he realized, though too faint and distorted to be heard properly. Praying that the vent was out of sight to those approaching, he lowered his head through the bars.

Below him, a pair of KG soldiers were being led by another man in strangely familiar yellow and blue gear along the perimeter of the deep pit. They stopped in front of one of the holding cells, and Daxter felt the bottom of his stomach drop when an even more familiar shape was dragged from the barred cubicle. Jak struggled feebly for no longer than the few moments it would take to realize he was hopelessly outnumbered and overpowered, and was practically a rag doll by the time he’d been strapped to a long chair in the center platform of the prison. Daxter suddenly remembered where he’d seen the man in the yellow jumpsuit, and wasn’t sure if he was surprised or not that the guy had more to do with the situation than the initial kidnapping. Posters around Haven City touting the smug-looking Commander as an authority to be feared told Daxter his name was Erol, and it was all the ottsel could do to not call him anything else from his precarious hiding place.

From somewhere above, a large, threatening looking device lowered itself at the push of a button on the platform, and Erol spoke something to the other guards before they saluted and left. Daxter hardly had time to wonder what it was for when it whirred to life, aiming at Jak and firing a horrible, crackling stream of garish black-violet light. He watched helplessly as his friend’s screams echoed through the room, louder and in more distress than Daxter could ever remember hearing. Motion from the side door along the catwalk caught his eye, and another familiar face marched his way to the center platform, his broad shoulders pushed back and straight.

The Baron was an ever-present and weighty menace on the city, Daxter had learned, but what Daxter found much more terrifying than the fear that Praxis’s propaganda and laws instilled in some of Haven's citizens, was the complete apathy displayed by the others. Little wonder, he realized, seeing how indifferent the man himself was to Jak’s suffering. At least Erol appeared to take some kind of sadistic glee in watching his prisoner arching painfully against the restraints. It was too much to bear, but Daxter kept his eyes open and focused, searching for some way he could get closer without being caught. He’d just spotted a small circular lift not too far below when a computerized voice replaced the awful buzzing of the gun.

_“Dark eco injection cycle complete. Bio readings nominal and unchanged.”_

Dark eco? Daxter’s heart nearly stopped. Now he knew he /em>had _to find some way to get to Jak, and fast. He tested hanging halfway out of the grate, realizing just how far down the lift was now that he only had the option of dropping. Being out of the echo-y chute, the voices from below were still faint but much clearer._

“Hmph, nothing! I was informed this one might be different.”

“He is surprisingly resistant to your experiments, Baron Praxis. I fear the Dark Warrior Program has failed.”

Their conversation thankfully covered the high squeak Daxter let loose as he plummeted to the lift, landing with an undignified _thud_. He lifted himself back up, shaking the dizziness from his head as it pounded with his chest. He could no longer see the platform, but if the Commander and Baron’s words were any indication, Daxter wasn’t sure he’d be able to stomach much more anyways. He glanced over the control panel on the lift, thankful to find the contraption would take him right to where he needed to be. Patience was hard as the ottsel waited for the sound of footsteps and the heavy door shutting behind the two, a sound that resonated down to the bone. Daxter took a deep breath, hoping Jak would at least be awake by the time he got there. He’d crack a joke, Jak would roll his eyes, and everything would be just fine. Pressing down on a lever, the lift rose quietly through the cavernous black.

“Ding ding,” he began dramatically once the lift had reached the platform, “Third Floor; body chains, roach food, torture devices…”

He leapt onto Jak’s chest, allowing the lift to freely float away into the distance.  
“Hey buddy, you seen any heroes around here?” he teased, looking first at the restraints at Jak’s wrists and ankles. As his eyes travelled up to his friend’s face, however, he couldn’t help but let out a yelp of surprise. Jak seemed to be struggling for consciousness. His breathing was shallow and ragged.  
“What’d they do to you?” he asked. No response.

Daxter frowned, climbing closer to Jak’s face. 

“Jak…” he pleaded, “It’s me, Daxter.”

At last, Jak opened his eyes. Weakly, he appeared to lift his head from the table, but it fell back almost immediately as he drifted again. Daxter would have to keep talking.

“That’s a fine hello.” he said bitterly, standing up straight again. “I’ve been crawling around in this place--risking my tail, _literally_ , to save _you_.”

Daxter realized he had been pacing and turned back to his friend’s face. “I’ve been looking for you for two years!” he shouted, lowering himself to grab hold of the scarf around Jak’s neck and shaking desperately with all of the might his small body could muster.  
“Say something…” he begged. “Just this once!”

Jak’s eyes suddenly focused with a burning rage that sent Daxter reeling back.

“I’m gonna _kill Praxis_!”

Daxter hadn’t expected a response, but remembering that guards were likely to be within earshot, he had no time to celebrate or be surprised, and rushed to smother Jak’s mouth with his paws.

“Shh!” he urged, looking around for any trace of red armor, “Right now we’ve gotta get you out of here.” Daxter looked around frantically. There had to be a button or a lever that would unlock the restraints. Jak’s breathing was suddenly growing heavy and loud. Had he finally come to and realized where they were? 

Daxter mumbled his plan as he was thinking, hoping to ease his mind. 

“Just let me figure out how to open the security locks for your chair so I…”

A low growl rumbled from below him and before he knew it he was all but launched from his place atop Jak’s arm as it was ripped from the table, taking the restraint along with it. 

Daxter picked himself up and turned to see Jak’s figure upright. For a moment, he was unsure if it was the lighting that had drained all color from Jak’s form; his hair and skin had paled to a purply gray, long dark claws had grown from his fingers, and matching horns had sprouted from his head.  
Jak’s bright blue eyes had turned an eerie, solid black, and they were looking directly at him in a way that made Daxter’s fur stand on end.

Daxter took in a breath uneasily as he assessed the situation.  
“Or, uh… you could do it.” he managed.

Jak’s head tilted, his eyes still unblinkingly focused on Daxter as his mouth twitched into a snarl. Dark eco was arcing off of Jak’s body and onto the ground around him. 

Had he been too late?

Daxter’s mind raced as Jak leapt from the table. He would have to find a way out. He would have to run. He would have to get off of the platform and up on a ledge or safely behind the bars of the adjacent hallway. He would have to get away. But there was no time anymore, Jak was now looking from his claws to Daxter as though putting together a puzzle. He was blocking the walkway to the other side of the pit. 

Daxter’s foot edged involuntarily backwards as he hopelessly attempted to persuade the creature that had somehow taken over his friend’s body and mind. 

“Jak?” he asked, willing his voice not to crack in terror. “Easy now… Easy, buddy…” 

The gap between them was closing and Daxter’s heart was beating wildly in his chest. There was nowhere left to run. A look over his shoulder reminded him that any movement backwards would send him falling to his death, and for an instant, he honestly considered it. 

“It’s--It’s your old pal, Daxter, remember?” he pleaded as Jak took a final step forward. Daxter flinched as he saw Jak poised to strike. He pulled his arms over his head and screwed his eyes shut, prepared to feel the sharp claws piercing his body at any moment.

But they didn’t. Instead, he heard a gruff voice faintly speak his name. 

As Daxter opened his eyes he saw Jak stumbling backwards, his head in his hands. Color had returned to his flesh and his hair. As relief washed over him, Daxter too found he had to fight to stay upright, feeling as though his limbs had turned to jelly. All at once, his terror had turned to anger, and he rounded on Jak. 

“What the heck was that!?” He screeched. He placed his hands on his hips as he willed his heart rate to slow. 

“Sheesh,” he spat finally, “remind me not to piss you off.” 

As he looked his friend over, he saw no trace of the malice or rage that had been so clear on his face just seconds before. Instead he only looked confused, dazed, and a bit scared. Daxter’s mouth twitched up bitterly and he rolled his eyes. 

“Come on, tall dark and gruesome.” he said, gesturing to the walkway. “We’re outta here.”

Mere moments after beginning to explain Tawniey was supposed to meet up with them soon and that she’d have fresh clothes for Jak, the soft tinny patter of feet on metal high above them stopped Daxter in his tracks. He turned his head to see that the sound was coming from a wide opening in the wall where a conveyer belt was steadily pulling cages through and onto the upper platform of the prison. It wasn’t until he could see the clear shape of Tawniey leaping through the door and grabbing onto the bars of a moving cage that he realized he’d been holding his breath.

“‘Bout time you showed up, we were just talking about you--”

“No time, we’ve gotta go-- _now_ ,” Tawniey shouted down. As she passed before them, Daxter could see she was panting, her face blanched and tight with panic. Elation glimmered in her eyes for only a moment when she saw Jak, but dimmed almost immediately as she touched down on the second platform. In a single motion, she hurdled over the platform’s banister, keeping one hand firmly locked on its bar as she swung herself around and down onto the floor below. 

“I found an access pass in the control room, but I may or may not have had some trouble on the way out,” Tawniey explained as she reached the lift at the final cell of the row. She kicked hard at the lever and it moved swiftly downward, clattering to a halt at the main floor. Just as he had opened his mouth to chastise her, she was motioning them to follow.

“Oooh, great. And after all the work I put in trying to be sneaky!” Daxter called after her as he ran to keep up while they raced to the exit. Jak’s eyes still seemed glossy as they went quickly back through the connected storage room and into a large hall full of chain-fitted flats big enough to carry a tank each.

“Daxter, I’m serious, we have to get him out of here as fast as we can,” she hissed, helping her friends onto one of the elevators. She deftly changed Jak out of his tattered uniform and into a set of new clothes that she had tucked into her belt. Daxter scoffed, but began to assist.  
“I had to knock some heads together,” the redhead continued, tightening some light armor to Jak’s shoulder, “and with the alarm going off, it took me longer to navigate without being seen; this place is _crawling_ with KG patrols--Jak?”

The young man groaned, his muscles twitching to life before going limp again. Tawniey moved to catch him, but he seemed to regain his balance.

“Dax, is he okay?” she asked, looking between the two. 

Daxter tapped his fingers on his side anxiously.  
“Not exactly.” He said as they reached their destination. He helped her pull Jak onto the new platform, avoiding her expectant gaze. 

“It’s complicated.” he said finally. “I’ll tell you later.”

“ _Later?_ ” she balked, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea for me to know _now_?” 

No sooner than the words had left her lips, there was a loud noise from across the room. Red uniforms were spilling in from every direction. Daxter could barely hear Tawniey mutter “too late” over the sound of cocking rifles and commands to stay where they were. 

As the first bullet whizzed over his head, Daxter saw Tawniey grabbing Jak roughly by the wrist and ducking behind the nearest wall. He scrambled to follow as they moved into a room with slotted floors. Tawniey was cursing as she ducked behind a machine to dodge the gunfire that was now being shot up at them from the floor below.

“What do we do?” He asked helplessly. There was no way to go back where they had come, and they were surely surrounded. 

Tawniey was staring out of their corner and into the open room, her eyes unfocused, and he knew she must be desperately attempting to recall the layout of the map. 

“There’s a sewer exit near here.” She said at last. “If we can get through this control room and into the trash conveyer, we should be able to make it.”

Daxter turned to see Jak with his face gripped tightly in his hands, and a chill ran down his spine. 

“Uh...Jak?”

There was a flash of violet and white, and it tore around the wall of their hiding place into the open.

“Jak??” Daxter’s calls went unheard. Tawniey stared at the ottsel in disbelieving terror, then back to the snarling monster that was all but ripping through the oncoming guards.

Jak swiped madly at any that came close enough to hit. Bloodlust came upon him in waves of unbridled fury, and in its own way felt exhilarating--fun even. There was no coherent thought to it, no pattern. Red-armored bodies, sharp and and haloed in unparalleled clarity, went from charging at him to broken and lying on the ground, and every inch of his body egged him on, screaming for more. He barreled towards an opening at the end of the room, smelling rusty air that may have been the thick chains hanging from the ceilings, or perhaps the fresh blood spilling within the goggled helmets of his would-be pursuers. He might have continued--simply stood and waited for the game to come to him--but something sharp and painful was hitting him from below his feet. 

With a great roar, he jumped for momentum and burst through the grate floor, now attacking the soldiers even as they shot relentlessly at him. Jak was vaguely aware that something else was following not too far behind, but it didn’t matter. They were weak, and more importantly, the screams of the prey in front of him were much more alluring. The scent he’d picked up on earlier was stronger now, and it gave him pause long enough to notice he was on some sort of conveyer. There were voices behind him still shouting, but differently than the death cries he’d been bathing in for the last few minutes. They felt familiar, and it made him want to run harder. Just as he got ready to go tearing back, to silence those voices, he was dumped unceremoniously into shallow water.

Jak snarled and righted himself just in time to hear more splashing behind him. It was the voices he hated now, the ones he needed to make quiet. He turned to face them, breathing ragged and menacing as he closed in on his kill. The things in front of him were not like the others, the only red he could recognize was in shades completely unlike the easily torn armor of all the rest. They were not charging him, instead holding out their arms, mouths moving as their voices continued to grate on. When one of them took his arm and started to pull towards a set of crates against the opposite wall, he gnashed his teeth, rearing back to bring his claws down on them. They both jumped out of the way, scrambling up the crates themselves. Their voices were beginning to take on the panicked trilling tone Jak desired, and he grinned wickedly as he climbed up after them.

The smell was overpowering now, mixing with salt and earth and air untainted by the eco saturated walls of this place. Behind his victims was an opening large enough for a person to fit through, and Jak was overcome with the urge to send the two plummeting from it. He moved in on them, growling, crackling with energy. Their shouting had become patterned, like they were trying to speak to him. But words were lost. They didn’t matter, and therefore, he did not hear.

_“Jak!”_

The monster faltered. It was beginning to feel familiar, that sound...

_“Jak, it’s us, snap out of it!!”_

The power was draining from his arms and legs, his mind just as unsteady. Angered by this, Jak took one last swipe, pushing it forward with all his might.

He hit ground after feeling weightless for just seconds, and had just enough time to register that the sound was something called a name. _His_ name. Being spoken by something he remembered to be...friends?

Jak groaned, feeling arms gently but firmly scooping him up by his own and pulling him into a warm hold, just before he succumbed to the darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

                               

Jak’s eyes opened groggily to see a familiar silhouette moving just a few feet in front of him. His head felt heavy, as if it were filled with water, and as he lifted it his surroundings came into clarity. He was in a soft bed, a golden pool of light filtered through a window and onto the wooden floor, and the shape he’d noticed first thing was standing in a room separated by a dingy partition across from where he lay.

Tawniey.

The name fell from his mouth in a tired rasp without Jak’s full intention, and the girl turned as if expecting she’d only imagined it. Her eyes widened, and she was by his side in a moment, a firm but gentle hand placed on his shoulder.

For a moment, the time and place eluded him. He was back on Sentinel Beach, sunbathing by the water when she had come to wake him up. Or perhaps he was exploring the deeper parts of the Forbidden Jungle and she was checking on him after he had fallen from one of the taller tree branches.

Her mouth was open, and she was saying something, but what exactly he wasn't sure. Slowly and bitterly, the fog cleared, as did Tawniey’s voice, and Jak realized he was being addressed with a frantic sort of relief.

“Jak! You’re really awake, you’re okay…”

“Where am I?” Jak murmured, his head starting to feel like he’d been hit squarely between the eyes. Tawniey’s face shifted to surprise, though the corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile.

“And you _did_ speak,” she wondered. “I thought I was hearing things...can you sit up? Are you hungry?”

Jak was now being helped upright, and he wasn’t certain if that was better or worse than the following attempt to stand on his own. As they made their way to one of the couches in the more lived in part of the flat, Jak had to step over a thick pile of messy blankets and pillows that had the distinct look of having been recently slept in.

He made it without his knees buckling too badly, and rubbed at his face in an attempt to stop the throbbing while Tawniey continued to stare at him in amazement as she spoke.

“You woke up just in time, we’re making breakfast--er, well, burning breakfast it would seem.”

“I heard that!” came a voice from the kitchenette that made Jak’s heart skip in the first moment of joy he could remember in years.

“...Daxter?”

The ottsel poked his head around the corner, expression in similar disbelief. As he hopped up on the island counter, the idea that this was all really happening had begun to sink in, and Jak looked between his friends as though for the first time.

“I was wonderin’ what was taking her so long--lookin’ a lot better than you were, buddy, yeesh. You should have seen the mess when we finished dragging you back here.”

“Daxter!” Tawniey chided, moving back into the kitchen to save what she could of the food. Jak’s feelings fought for solid purchase on his face, settling somewhere between confusion and horror as what Daxter had said started to sink in.

“How...how did you guys get me out?”

Tawniey’s voice carried from the kitchen, suddenly sounding more tentative, “Do you remember anything?”

“Not really,” Jak replied honestly, “Its still hard to believe I’m not dreaming.” 

“So….nothing about the last two days has any significance for you?” 

“Except that I’m apparently out of prison, no--why?” 

“...Nothing, never mind,” Tawniey emerged from the kitchen again, this time with plates balanced on her hands and arm. She put one in front of Jak, then Daxter and herself before sitting down, and smiled before changing the subject.

“Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Jak was suddenly aware of how empty his stomach felt, and spared only a second to look at the charred salmon and toast in front of him in awe before he was shoveling it into his mouth. He’d never tasted anything so good, the flavor of anything that wasn’t stale and rotten rations having been long forgotten, and forced himself to slow down just enough to savor and relearn it. 

By the time he looked up from his plate, he was nearly finished, yet Tawniey and Daxter hadn’t made it halfway through their own portions. 

“There some still in the kitchen.” Tawniey said, gesturing behind her. “And I think we have enough to make more if we need to. You must be absolutely starving after sleeping so long.” 

“So long?” Jak felt like he could easily sleep another few hours if he were to lie back down. He looked questioningly between Daxter and Tawniey, and the ottsel answered when Tawniey seemed to have trouble forming words.

“You’ve been out for almost two days, man.”

Jak’s breakfast suddenly felt like a lead weight in his stomach. That couldn’t be right. How could he possibly have slept for two whole days when he’d gotten so used to barely managing a few hours every night in his cell? The feeling of suspicious concern he’d had all morning swelled in his chest when his friends took on varying levels of guilt in their expressions, belying the calm secrecy surrounding his freedom. It was as if they didn’t want him to know, didn’t want him to hear what had happened for fear he would react in some way that wasn’t ideal to them. He wondered if they’d been hurt on his behalf, that they’d faced some horror as yet unknown to him by the Guard’s hand--or worse, the Baron’s.

Jak moved his gaze heavily back to his plate, fists clenching around it. If that bastard had so much as thought about putting a finger on either of them… 

“Well, it’s no big deal really, it was actually kind of reassuring knowing you’d be right where we left you,” Tawniey interrupted Jak’s brooding.  
“Dax and I both have day jobs that aren’t exactly always on a set schedule, so it was a lucky coincidence you woke up when you did.”

Jak blinked. Tawniey he could understand, but--

“Daxter has a job?”

“Haven City’s top exterminator of bugs, pests, and all manner of vermin, at your service,” Daxter boasted grandly. “Nobody appreciates me for my talents as much as they should, but I make this dump of a town livable for the common working man.” 

Tawniey failed at suppressing a giggle, but stopped the moment Daxter turned on her, his mouth curled back in a pouty sneer.

“Laugh all you want, Red, _this_ paid worker gets a steady paycheck that can buy better than day old muffins.”

“Sure beats sleeping at the end of other people’s beds,” Tawniey retorted, though the smile never left her face. “He’s right though--artifact hunting isn’t always steady work, but it pays well enough if you get the right clients. At the very least, my armor’s been a lot more useful.”

As the two bickered, Jak couldn’t help but smile a little. It reminded him of meeting the wide-eyed girl in too-big armor while exploring the Forbidden Jungle; how she’d followed him and Daxter around, explaining everything about the safety hazards of the place and when and how to avoid them. How Daxter had whispered warnings in his ear about ‘letting a girl tell them what to do’, and Tawniey proving with a few square kicks to some giant frogs and snakes that she was every bit as competent as any adult at navigating the tangles of vine and forest. How annoyed Daxter had been when, with a grin wider than seemed able to fit on her face, Tawniey had rescued them that same day from an angry swarm of wumpbees and had immediately after been unofficially accepted as a regular playmate from then on. Jak was pulled back into the conversation when Daxter leapt onto his shoulder, asking if he’d been paying attention.

“Sorry,” he apologized, “just thinking about how things are more familiar than I would have expected.”

“You might want to reserve judgement on that until after you’ve acclimated.”

Jak looked at Tawniey, who was now setting aside her mostly empty plate on the floor. She looked back to him, watching his face intently.

“This place is really different from Sandover--even more than just the way it looks. I’ve been doing pretty well for myself and _still_ wouldn’t be nearly as far along without Kendryk’s help with a lot, including this apartment.”

Jak raised a brow.

“Kendryk?”

“Oh, he’s uh….I guess a friend? Normally too busy with his in-home medical gig to spend a lot of time with, but I see him every couple of weeks or so for coffee and catch-up. Actually,” Tawniey’s mouth suddenly pulled in as though she’d suddenly had a thought, “he’s probably busy right now with paperwork cos it’s Thursday, but he’s close to the Stadium.” Her mouth turned upwards, like that last sentence had been very obviously good news.

“Hey if you guys are up to it, you should get dressed! I can show you around some and then I’ve got a little surprise. What do you think?”

Daxter said something about not liking surprises, especially not Tawniey’s, but Jak told him he wouldn’t mind getting to stretch his legs and agreed to the outing. Begrudgingly, Daxter hopped off his shoulder to let him get ready, and helped himself to the rest of the food on the small stove while he waited.

It took several hours to make their way through the winding slums and into the stadium district. Most of the way Jak had to stay close enough to Tawniey to hear the whispered explanations of the winding roads and walkways, but found it difficult to not be distracted at least a few times by the sprawling stone and metal that jutted out from the dusty ground. After so much time staring at the same four walls, it almost felt too big, but his legs remembered long before he did that they had traveled much greater distances across Sandover. Daxter rode exactly where he was used to on his shoulder, placing a comfortingly familiar weight on his back and neck. Even when the trio had to make themselves unnoticable while passing small clusters of KG officers patrolling the area, Jak felt genuinely free for the first time he had since childhood. For reasons he couldn’t quite pin, it was almost more terrifying that way.

Smells he had only ever before detected in much less potent concentrations assaulted Jak’s nose as they neared a long, narrow alley way into the Stadium area. Alcoves containing tools and tables of all kinds lined the path, and he realized it was motor oil that fumed the air. Tawniey had called it a garage, but it seemed to connect apartment-style cubicles between short halls the deeper they went down the alley. Dingy as it was, the place was very obviously a home to at least a small handful of people, and the cluttered domesticity of it felt familiar, welcoming even. He hadn’t been sure why he felt so completely at home among the odd tools, motors, and cement until he saw blue green hair poking over the top of a welding mask. 

Behind a sleek silver zoomer, surrounded by the glowing sparks of the welding gun was Keira. Jak felt his mouth open and close as Tawniey called out to her, waving when she noticed and stood upright. As the girl pulled off her mask, he saw the tired smile on her face quickly turn to complete shock and joy before he realized she was looking at _him_. 

“Jak?”  
Keira trotted up to the group, looking between them.

“Jak! Daxter! It _is_ you!”

Daxter nearly fell from Jak’s shoulder, seeming equally in shock.

“ _Keira?_ ”

Keira was all smiles, taking Daxter’s small face in her hands.

“I never thought I’d be so glad to see your furry mug!”

Tawniey laughed at the ottsel as he pulled away, smoothing himself back into place. Even Jak had begun to feel the corner of his mouth curling upwards, preparing to form around words when Keira looked to him, her own mouth falling straight and worried.

“And Jak--you look...different.”

Despite new clothes and a properly washed face, Jak knew he hardly looked okay. His own reflection had been something of a shock to him that morning--his thin cheeks and dark circles a far cry from what he remembered his face to be--but the growing heaviness in everyone’s mood only confirmed how obvious the change was.

“It’s been a tough ride,” he managed at last, unable to meet her eyes any longer.

Keira’s expression shifted in much the same way Tawniey’s had earlier at his voice, but she didn’t comment. Tawniey cleared her throat purposefully, suddenly looking sheepish.

“Sorry to drop in on you with this and no warning,” she said. “I just thought it’d be a fun surprise.”

“It’s fine,” Keira started, beaming, “--better than fine! I’d been waiting a few extra hours for Flint to _finally_ show up since the race is tomorrow-- otherwise I wouldn’t even still be here, but, precursors, I’m so glad I stayed!”

Tawniey rolled her eyes and smirked. “That sounds like Flint.” 

Jak watched the two chat, not wanting to interrupt but feeling a bit lost. This was the second time today he’d heard an unfamiliar name spoken familiarly, and he was starting to wonder just how many other secrets the world beyond his prison cell would dangle in front of him. Daxter shifted on his perch, asking Jak if he was doing ok. He forced a thin smile, saying he was just a bit tired. This was apparently an affront on both Tawniey and Keira’s sensibilities, because both were suddenly on him like startled mothers. In the whirlwind of questions, a decision was made to find a spot at a popular tavern and ‘catch up’, and Keira excused herself for a fast shower before they were on their way. 

Keira and Tawniey rode ahead of him as a guide on their own vehicle, Jak driving tentatively behind.  
Even with the warnings given to him, it took a few minutes for him to get used to how much more complicated and fast the zoomers were. It had been a little unnerving, but soon it became as intuitive as the one he could remember drifting through the grass back home on, and that much he could handle. But the idea of rehashing the past two years in one meal felt like a lead brick in his stomach, regardless of the fact that he’d spent the majority of that time in monotonous routine.

The weight had settled squarely in his gut by the time they dismounted at a quaint little building in the slums near the Industrial Section; an old but sturdy looking place with faded letters reading “The Cellar” over its disproportionately small door. From outside, voices could be heard in raucous song and conversation, but once the group entered, it was all Jak could do to hear himself think. The crowded floor could have been described as cozy, with warmly lit tables and a bar towards the back. Having to push through a few people who had clearly started drinking early that afternoon, Keira finally sat them all at a booth close to a set of stairs over the far end of the bar, and called a waiter over. 

His discomfort was eased some when Jak was brought a thick mug of ale and a heaping slice of shepherd’s pie not long after the group had finished ordering. Everyone else seemed as happy with their own choices as food was laid out in front of them, though attention was quickly back on Jak after the waiter had left.

“So,” Keira began eagerly, “Where exactly have you two been this whole time? I know the Stadium’s on the end of town, but its pretty much the best entertainment in this awful place. You’d think you guys would get out once in a while to see it.”

There was a moment in which Jak could tell that Keira noticed she had said something wrong, but hadn’t yet figured out what. Tawniey’s mouth twitched as though to answer, but Daxter quickly responded through a mouthful of meat.

“Well, _I_ happened to have been very busy. Busy with an important new job. Too busy, in fact, to waste time on petty gambling and crowds of sweaty people.” He said.

“You mean you didn’t have an access pass.” Keira said, rolling her eyes.

“That is entirely beside the point.” Daxter shot back. “And Jak’s been a bit preoccupied, himself. Those nasty KG goons dragged him off to the fortress the day we got here, and if it weren’t for me, we would have never seen him since.”

Jak was certain Tawniey was going to punch the ottsel through the table with the look she was giving him, but other than a forcefully pointed throat-clearing, she said nothing and for the next while, neither did Daxter.

“It really is good to see you again,” Keira restarted gingerly, “when I first saw you walking up, I thought maybe I’d just been working too hard.”

“You do that anyway,” Tawniey teased, tearing a piece of dinner roll off with more force than was strictly necessary. “To be honest, I was both relieved and kind of disappointed you were right where I thought I’d find you in the garage.”

“This is an important race, even if it’s a small one, and just because Flint decided it wasn’t worth practicing for--ugh, sometimes I wonder if he skips out just to irritate me. You _know_ how hard it is to get a good time slot on the tracks.”

“Hey, you know how he can be before race days...”

“So who _is_ Flint?” Jak interjected, finally too curious to sit and listen.

“One of the better racers on my team and he _knows_ it. He’s a total corn-ball and only shows up when it doesn’t interfere with his flirting schedule--”

“But a really genuinely good guy,” Tawniey interrupted in a way Jak felt was indicative that this rant was more habit than real venom. Daxter made a crack about the girls just not understanding how exhausting being a ladies-man could be, but after a soft slap to the back of his head, the mood seemed to lighten up considerably. It really was beginning to feel more like old times, and Jak even laughed some when the others seemed to silently understand the same sentiment.

“Well at this rate,” Keira said, looking up at Jak, “I might just ask you to replace him for being such a slacker. You figured out that zoomer really quickly considering--uh, I mean…”

The laughter was short lived. Realization settled slowly over the table, and Jak opened his mouth to say something before shutting it again over a slow sip of his drink.

“I’m sorry,” Keira apologized quickly, “I didn’t mean…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jak murmured, hoping he sounded as sincere as he wanted to.

“He’s actually been doing surprisingly well, especially for how wobbly he was when he woke up,” Daxter put a hand on Jak’s arm, sounding chipper in the way he did when he meant to create a diversion. “Heck, even that was nothing compared to what he was like getting him back to the apartment.”

Keira shook her head, gesturing between the redhead, ottsel, and Jak.

“But I don’t understand--how did you two possibly get him out of the fortress with all those guards?”

“The Baron pumped our boy here full of dark eco, and it did something to him,” Daxter piped up, “now he’s got super moves or something...and a few anger issues as well.”

“Daxter!” Tawniey reeled on him, alarmed. Jak startled at how quickly she reacted, and the sense of suspicion that had haunted him all day crept through his skin anew. Just what was going on? How _did_ they get him out? And why was it such an apparently taboo subject? He looked meaningfully at Tawniey, who was sitting with her arms tight to her stomach as if trying to physically hold in the truth or illness or both. At last, she sighed, seeming more guilty than anything.

“Jak, I didn’t want to scare you first thing when you woke up, but whatever that eco did to you....we didn’t take out those guards alone. In fact, you pretty much tore through them--”

“Like tissue paper!” Daxter interrupted enthusiastically.

“--all by yourself,” Tawniey finished, giving the other an impatient scowl. Her expression softened again, voice less wavered now.

“We were in a pretty tight spot and I wasn’t sure if we’d make it, when you just...transformed. I’ve never seen anything like it, but you took down every guard that came at you in minutes. Right before you passed out, you even--well, the point is your body was probably under tons of stress because you were pretty badly hurt once we got you back to my place to clean you up. I’m sorry it had to come out like this, we were going to tell you soon.”

Jak couldn’t believe what he was hearing. There was no way any of that story could be right. He had been so broken down and weak, he didn’t even try fighting the guards off when they’d come to collect him from his cell to be tortured and experimented with. How could he manage a whole squad?

Keira seemed equally troubled, though with a much darker expression clouding her face.

“So then...that was you?”

The group turned to her. She seemed to be searching for answers in Jak’s face, then Tawniey’s, even Daxter’s. When none came, she settled on Tawniey again, tone grim and posture tight.

“The other day while I was setting up, there was a huge safety alert on one of the projection posts--they said there was a terrible monster on the loose, that something from the Fortress’s experiments had somehow managed to escape and anything suspicious was to be reported.”

As Keira spoke, Jak could feel the floor dropping from underneath him. He didn’t want to, couldn’t believe.

“The picture wasn’t too clear since I think it came from their security cams, but…”

No. No, she couldn’t be looking at him like that, like she was beginning to see whatever resemblances she wanted to. It wasn’t him. He’d blacked out, it wasn’t possible for him to have done anything. He glanced to Tawniey, to Daxter, hoping for even the smallest hint that this was some sick joke. It was all some horrible nightmare and he’d wake up soon.

“Hey, I know this is a lot to take in but you’re out of there and we’re going to figure out how to help you. Keira’s been working on something to get us all home eventually, and we can definitely keep you safe in the mean time.”

“Seems to me that _my_ safety isn’t really what you’re all worried about here.”

The table went silent. Jak knew it had been a harsh thing to say, knew it was out of anger. But the fact that his obvious turn in mood had both Tawniey and Keira looking more on edge only served to make the accusation feel more vindicated. Even Daxter appeared to take pause, and Jak couldn’t stop himself from taking advantage of their silent attention.

“Think what you want, I’m _not_ some kind of freak, and I don’t need you all treating me as if I’m going to suddenly snap.”

It was a long, difficult ordeal to finish their food after that. The summer sun was just hitting the top of the wall in the distance, and despite the brilliant color beginning to wash through the sky, the group was shadowed in a dark cloud. Jak at least let through a certain sheepishness when Keira repeated that it was good to see him and know he was doing okay as they prepared to part ways after returning to the garage, but it didn’t make the walk back seem like it was going to be any easier. He managed a weak smile when Daxter hopped up to his shoulder, the weight once again a small comfort. However, after the first few blocks, right when Tawniey turned to say something, an all too familiar, gruff voice could be heard growing in tinny distortion over the light crowd in the streets.

“--monster loose in our fair Haven City. For your own safety and to keep from sending it into a rage, do not engage with it. Any suspicious activity or sightings of this creature should and will be reported to members of the Krimzon Guard--”

Jak couldn’t move. He stood in front of a machine that rose out of the ground with speakers and a projected screen that, in seconds, flashed from the symbol of the KG to images of a horned, dark figure. There was a short video of it moving, and though no guards showed in the frame, it was impossible for anyone to have survived with the amount of blood splashed across the grated floor and dripping from the monster’s claws.

“--it is a criminal, and a freak. Under no circumstances is it to be pitied or assisted in any way.”

It was unmistakable. Even with the ghoulish, grey skin and hair, even with the grainy quality of the video, Jak knew.

“--Anyone found to have knowledge of this monster without reporting will be considered a traitor to the Baron and the city, and punished to within the full extent of the law.”


	4. Chapter 4

                               

The next two weeks passed in a grueling haze. Each morning, Jak would wake and remind himself that freedom was his new reality, and each night as the Baron’s voice came over the radios, he would wish with a sinking guilt that it was just a nightmare. Despite the obvious weight of the topic, his gruesome transformation had not been brought up since that night’s dinner. Jak felt this was just as well, considering he wasn’t sure what he would say about it if it were. Even having seen himself on the projector in town, it had been nearly impossible to believe, and it took discovering traces of dried blood on the cuffs of his sleeves and beneath his fingernails to really set in completely. Through all of the torture of the last two years, fear was an emotion that Jak had become intimately acquainted with, but now the fear was not of something on the outside-- the KG, or the chair, or Erol, or the Baron. For the first time in his entire life, what he feared most was himself. He feared what he was capable of becoming. 

It was this nagging anxiety that was making even Tawniey’s cheerful apartment feel as restricting as his prison cell, and he found himself grumbling incoherently as he sat down on one of the new spindle stools that had been arranged around the island counter to join the others for breakfast. Upon arrival, Daxter pushed a platter full of eggs and roasted vegetables toward him as he helped himself to more milk from a glass jug. Tawniey was absently poking the eggs on her plate as she leafed through a newspaper with prominent headlines describing the latest KG victories and upcoming NYFE races. The center page had been pulled out and set aside, and the small tight boxes of classified ads had been marked nearly beyond legibility by a red felt-tipped pen.

“Let me guess,” Daxter started, wiping milk from the fur of his upper lip with the back of his hand, “The Metalheads are attacking, the KG are winning, and all your friends and neighbors are traitors. Why do you read that trash, Tawn?”

Tawniey sighed heavily as though in agreement.

“Because as slanted as it always is, it’s still a good source of information if you know what to look for. For instance--” she said folding the paper to frame the front page and pushing it to Daxter, “The next NYFE race is still weeks out, hardly headline news, yet it’s sharing the front page with an article about the outer-wall fights with the Metalheads near Haven Forest on Tuesday. But, Tuesday I was out by Haven Forest looking for that eco compression machine for a client, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that there were no guards stationed there all day.”

Jak pulled the paper across the table toward him to get a closer look, “So you think they’re trying to cover something up.”

“Exactly.” She replied, leaning across the counter and turning to the fifth page for him. “So I looked at the articles further in where they had the ‘honorable casualties’ of the so-called fight, when I saw this tiny article here about an explosion in the KG fortress. It doesn’t say much except that it was believed to be caused by a fault in the eco grid and that, miraculously, everyone survived.”

“Well, that smells fishier than your dad after a trip to the river.” Daxter jabbed to Tawniey. 

Jak fought to suppress a laugh as Daxter dodged Tawniey’s resulting attempt to push him off of the counter. Just then, there was a loud buzzing from Tawniey’s pocket, and the ottsel used the opportunity to climb up onto Jak’s shoulder and out of reach. Tawniey pulled out her access pass and flipped it open. 

“Speaking of…” she said. “It turns out that client is ready to meet up.” 

Jak watched her stand up with new urgency and begin weaving her way through the apartment to gather her things. 

“That’s great, because we’re running low on food.” Daxter called after her.

“Yeah, I know.” She replied, poking her head back around the corner as she hopped into one of her boots. “I’ll tell you what. This payoff is pretty big, so lets go out to celebrate tonight. We can get dinner and drinks.”

“Sounds good.” Jak replied.

“Yeah, and in the meantime, Jak and I can spend the day on the town.” Daxter grinned, playfully elbowing at Jak’s head. 

“Great.” Tawniey said, standing up straight. She tightened the last of her armor, slung a large bag over her shoulder and headed toward the door. “I’ll meet you guys at The Cellar around sundown, okay?”

Jak nodded, finally taking a bite of the eggs on his plate. The ottsel on his shoulder gave Tawniey a double thumbs-up as she disappeared around the doorframe. As the door slid shut behind her, the great wave of sudden energy that had built around her was swept out the door as well. Daxter exhaled deeply and hopped from Jak’s shoulder to the floor. 

“Well, now that she’s gone, let’s finally go have some fun.” Daxter said mischievously. 

Jak raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Oh come on, the last few weeks we’ve only been to boring places. Don’t you want to see where the real fun is? The night life? Sure, it’s day right now, but that doesn’t mean the party’s not happenin’. C’mon, Jak, finish your breakfast. Let’s paint the town!” 

Even if he would have had reservations, Jak didn’t see much use in resisting Daxter’s excited plans. Truthfully, Jak wasn’t as much concerned as he was at a loss for what to expect. Considering that Daxter’s previous social habits had been limited to the small pool of Sandover Village, this much enthusiasm had been reserved for plans of pranking the old sage, chasing seagulls, or pestering Keira while she worked. However, between the broad reassuring grin across the ottsels face and the understanding that Daxter seemed far more in his element in this bustling metropolis, Jak couldn’t help but get a bit excited too, and it wasn’t long before they were walking down the dingy streets of Haven. 

They worked their way through the winding slums, the industrial section, and the Eastern Bazaar; the ottsel chattering on about the places they passed while his friend patiently listened. Daxter’s voice grew impressively loud as they had to pass another of the Baron’s news machines, nearly drowning out the booming announcement about the upcoming Haven City Tricentennial. 

“And that,” Daxter said, pointing to a large building with blacked out windows and a bright neon sign, “is where the real action is on a Friday night, if you’re into dancing. Boy, can those girls dance.”

Jak had just opened his mouth to reply when a piercingly loud noise came from a few blocks behind them. Jak stopped.

“That sounded like gunshots.” Jak said.

“Yeah, it did.” Daxter said uneasily from his shoulder.

“Let’s go check it out, Dax.”

“Jak, I’m not sure that’s a good idea--”

But Jak wasn’t listening. Instead, he was quickly weaving his way upstream through the flow of people and toward the source of the sound. He wasn’t sure what drove him forward. Logic would dictate that gunshots meant Krimzon Guard, and Krimzon Guard meant the very real possibility of being shot down or captured. Somehow, however, the racing of his heart was not from fear, but from excitement. Without realizing, his face had spread into a wide grin.

As they rounded the corner, they spotted a group of guards standing around a small shop. Within a second of observing the scene, it was clear that they had found the source of the commotion. There were at least two bodies on the ground already, and though the Guards were now still, their rifles were pointed squarely at the chests of a dozen terrified citizens. 

“Please!” Someone shouted in a trembling voice. One guard simply repositioned his rifle in response.

“Any more outbursts and we will be forced to open fire.” the center guard announced. “This establishment is in violation of city ordinance 76D. By order of his eminence, Baron Praxis, everyone in this area is under arrest until further investigation.”

As Jak watched the center guard raise the butt of his rifle to a cowering man who must have been the shopkeeper, he suddenly felt a jolt as the world ripped away from him. He was no longer standing on the dusty dirt road of the Eastern Bazaar. He was fifteen, his bare feet on cold metal in an unfamiliar city. He was hopelessly outnumbered by men twice his size, surrounding him, taking him in, looking him over hungrily like vultures. He was being lifted forcefully from a pitch black cell and yanked out into the light. He was being stripped down to nothing, shoved into a moldy shower room and redressed in a loose green uniform. He was being strapped down to a cold metal chair as dark eco pumped into him from a machine above, searing through his skin, setting fire to his very bones.

His heart was pounding furiously in his chest. Every muscle in his body was screaming for him to move, to run to the red armored officers and rip out their throats, to impale them on his claws and empty their organs into the streets. He wanted to feel the warmth of their blood as it coated his hands. He wanted to bathe in it. 

Not even Daxter’s voice could reach him as he readied himself to charge, but as he started to take the first step forward, he stopped.

They were falling. 

The guards were falling, as if in slow motion, one by one, with no warning and no sound. While they crumpled to their knees, the civilians scattered for cover. 

Jak whirled his head around, the realization that there was a gunman nearby beginning to slowly wash over him as he returned to his senses; but no matter how hard he searched, there was no attacker to be seen. 

The citizens were starting to come out from their shelters, their voices soft and nearly unintelligible. 

_“Do you think that was…?”_

_“It could be.”_

_“The Underground. Bless them.”_

_“By Mar, we’re saved.”_

“Jak?” Daxter’s voice asked warily from behind him. “You okay, buddy?”

“I’m fine.” Jak lied after a moment. His head was starting to spin, but he forced himself steady. The bodies of the Guards and the two civilians were still lying in the middle of the street. Though the overwhelming rage Jak had so recently felt had disappeared almost completely in the shock of the ensuing events, he found himself watching as the dirt darkened around the corpses. Even as Daxter climbed back onto his shoulder, it took all of his effort to tear his eyes away. 

Using the excuse that the sun was nearly setting and Tawniey would be expecting them soon, they decided to make their way back through the Bazaar. The incident seemed to have cleared the streets of Krimzon Guard, and Jak found himself wondering cynically if that meant that they had been called away as reinforcements or told to vacate for their own safety. Though the two stopped by a few shops and watched a few street artisans make their wares just as they had on their way in, Jak was now finding it difficult to respond to any of his friend’s quips. Thankfully, Daxter seemed to understand this, and they settled comfortably into the routine of his speech and Jak’s silence with ease. 

By the time they reached The Cellar, the mood had calmed considerably. As Jak pushed open the door and stepped inside, they were immediately hit by the smell of hot food and the sounds of music and laughter. A chipper young hostess immediately pointed them toward a booth at the side of the room, and Jak smiled graciously in return. Daxter told their waitress that they were waiting for a friend but to start a tab in Tawniey’s name until she got there, and soon they were brought two large mugs of ale and a basket of chips. 

“Hot damn, what a day.” Daxter said, hopping up onto the table and taking a long drink from his own mug. 

Jak nodded and leaned back into his seat. There was something about the lively nature of the inn that made him feel relaxed. Perhaps it was the warmth of the kitchen and bustling people, or perhaps it was just that the noise of their chatter was effective at drowning out his thoughts. As Daxter started poring over the menu, Jak let his eyes and ears wander to the others in the bar. 

In the far corner, there was a large group of people all surrounded in a thick cloud of cigar smoke, happily playing cards. Nearer to the center, there were pale green streamers wrapped around the chairs of at least five tables. Congratulations were being given to a young brown haired man with in ruffled work attire who appeared to be elatedly describing every tiny feature of his newborn child to anyone who would listen. Further toward the bar, there were several angry looking people who were drowning the sorrows of lost promotions and workplace rivals in copious amounts of a dark colored liquor, and immediately to their left were a white haired teen and a dark haired man laughing about upcoming races. 

Jak couldn’t be sure how long he and Daxter had waited, or how many mugs he had consumed, when a table nearby caught his attention. They were talking in grave whispers under the dull roar of the bar. 

“---a shooting earlier in the Bazaar. The KG were after some glassmaker without a permit, two down already---” 

“ _Of course_ they were.” 

“---when he took them out. All of them. The whole squad.” 

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. The KG have got it coming. It’s no wonder he’s Torn’s right hand.”

“No wonder at all. Hey, did you hear what Jinx did to the barracks?”

“Yeah, I did. That was expertly done. We’ve got them on guard now. The Baron will be-- ”

Jak stood at the mention of the Baron’s name. 

Suddenly, he didn’t care whether they were supposed to meet Tawniey or not. Nothing about sitting and listening felt appealing at all. He needed to move.

“I’m out of here.” He said quietly to Daxter, who blinked at him over the rim of his now empty glass before clambering onto his shoulder. 

Jak wove through the crowd with some difficulty. When he finally reached the door, he shoved it open aggressively and stormed his way through, nearly ramming into a man who’d been smoking near the entrance. 

“Watch it!” he heard from behind him. 

Grinding his teeth, Jak rounded on the man. He was fully aware that it was his fault, but the bitterness simmering in his chest was beginning to cloud his judgement. The man had squared his shoulders, lowered his cigarette and looked ready to retaliate. He was a full head taller than Jak, and even beneath his garishly bright windbreaker, Jak could tell he had a lean fighter’s build. There was a long rifle slung across his back with a cloth strap, but he did not seem to be making a move for his weapon. Jak felt a smirk tugging at his lips as he met the man’s glare. Whoever he was, he had chosen the wrong fight. 

“Sorry!” Daxter said hastily from Jak’s shoulder. “We were just passing through.” 

Jak opened his mouth to tell Daxter to be quiet, but his would-be opponent had already appeared to back down. His gold eyes had softened from a harsh glare to curious appraisal.

“You’re the kid who’s got the KG in a panic.” The man said at last, his voice nearly reverent. “The escaped experiment. I heard you cut down a dozen squads with your bare hands.”

Jak stopped.

“What?” he asked incredulously, rebounding immediately. “What of it?”

“Oh, nothing.” The man replied. He huffed a short laugh and returned to his cigarette, leaning back against the wall. “It’s just an honor to meet the Baron’s latest toy.” 

Jak’s fists clenched involuntarily, rage building inside of him. What felt like static electricity zapped from his hand to his leg and Daxter shifted on his shoulder.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but I am not anyone’s toy.” He shot back. 

“No, you took care of that with finesse, didn’t you?” The man replied sympathetically. “I’d imagine that if it was me who’d been played with like that, I’d want to strike back.” 

For a moment, Jak’s resolve flickered. Strike back? How could he strike back? The KG outnumbered him by the thousands. There was no way into the palace, no way to confront the Baron on equal footing. 

As though he was reading Jak’s very thoughts, the stranger continued.

“You can’t do it alone,” he said, taking a few ambling steps toward Jak, “but then again you don’t have to. There are people fighting back already. I’m sure you’ve heard the whispers. The Baron will never say it, but the city is at war-- and not just with the metalheads. And a war is a perfect opportunity… is it one you’re willing to take?"

"You seem to know a whole lot for some guy we’ve never met before." Daxter interjected. "Let’s get out of here, Jak."

Jak knew Daxter was right, but still, his feet remained firmly rooted where they were. 

“It’s my business to know things.” The man chuckled. “I’m an informant for the Underground.”

The Underground? 

A shiver ran up Jak’s spine as he realized where he had heard that name before. That had been the word that was used by the people that had been saved from the KG. Was this the group that was fighting the Guard?

“I could help you.” The man offered, “Or, if you’d like, you’ll never see me again. I just thought that someone like you-- with your skill, and your power-- would have the guts to push back against Praxis.” 

Jak’s jaw tensed habitually at the mention of the Baron’s name, but he stayed silent, crossing his arms. The man in front of him took one last drag on his cigarette as he expectantly watched Jak, as though waiting for some sort of verbal response. After a moment, however, he disappointedly dropped the butt end and crushed it under his boot. 

“I’ll tell you what.” he said, finally. “Take some time to think about it. After all, it is an awfully big decision. You’re already wanted, so why put yourself in more danger just for a little revenge…see you around, Jak.”

With that, he started away, leaving Jak and Daxter standing in the dim light of The Cellar’s windows. Jak’s thoughts were racing. 

This was it. This was his chance to take what he so desperately wanted. For as good as it had been to be freed from the walls of the prison, the city streets were just a bigger cage. Though it had never been so solidified in his mind, he could tell he always knew that he would not be able to rest as long as Praxis ruled over Haven City.

For the last two weeks, Jak had been fighting off nightmares and waking visions of taking vengeance on the Baron and his men. He had thought that this must have been a result of the darkness that had been slowly consuming his mind, that had been planted by Praxis himself; but if it meant killing Baron Praxis, what reason did he have to hesitate? Perhaps the best way to silence the nightmares was to bring them into reality.

Without warning, Jak turned back toward the street where he had watched the man walk away, causing Daxter to nearly lose his footing. He could barely hear as the ottsel tried to grab his attention, saying something about Tawniey and the bar. Instead, Jak focused all of his concentration on catching up to the stranger at the end of the street. 

He had stopped as soon as Jak’s footsteps had become audible, and turned to Jak expectantly.

“I don’t need time to think.” Jak said. “If you’re taking on the Baron, I’m in.”

“Good to hear.” The man grinned in response, pulling his hands from his pockets. “Now, pay attention. There’s a graffitied wall in a dead end of the slums. South-Eastern side, near the city wall. Go there tomorrow around noon. Knock three times, someone will answer. Ask for Torn. Got it?”

“Got it.” Jak replied automatically. 

“Then I’ll see you soon.” the man said. 

Daxter stood up on Jak’s shoulder and crossed his arms as the man headed into a nearby alley and disappeared from sight. Tawniey’s voice was echoing down the empty street after them as she jogged to where they stood. 

“Hey! Woah, wait, I specifically didn’t eat yet ‘cos I really wanted those turken tenders,” she called after them.

Upon reaching her friends, Tawniey’s smile faded. Jak looked almost crazed with excitement. His eyes were unfocused, fixed on the ground, but a wide grin was still visible even in the shadows. Tawniey looked between him and Daxter, unable to read the atmosphere as anything other than charged with adrenaline. 

"What just happened?" she asked at last, bracing herself for the answer. 

"I think," Daxter replied slowly, shaking his head, "We just joined a revolution.”


	5. Chapter 5

                               

The walk back from the alley to their seats was filled mostly by Daxter’s grandiose retelling of his and Jak’s encounter to Tawniey. She stared hard between the two, and whether it was from the stranger’s words or the unabashed determination from Jak in response, Tawniey seemed ill-at-ease. Just the same, she picked over her dinner and paid the tab, making sure she stuck by her friends this time lest she find that there’d be more news to greet her.

However, by the time the trio made it back to the apartment complex, her mood had visibly shifted. Tawniey was practically vibrating with an energy and enthusiasm, much to Daxter’s dismay. He complained loudly that she and Jak both were nuts if they were seriously going to consider anything the weird man from the Cellar had to offer.

“You’re telling me there’s a group that’s actually fighting back against Praxis and you _aren’t_ excited?” Tawniey grinned, stepping widely in through her door.

“That’s exactly what i’m telling you,” Daxter retorted, leaping to the floor from Jak’s shoulder. “This whole mess has ‘Danger: Stupid Unnecessary Death Awaits’ written _all_ over it! Besides,” he crossed his arms, “you two aren’t exactly in good graces with the dear Baron as it is. Don’t the KG sort of frown upon the whole escaped convict and artifact hunter thing?”

“What _don’t_ the KG frown upon? That’s kind of my point--we’re in the pits as it is, may as well do what we can now that we know there’s a very real way to do it! Besides, we’re stuck until Keira figures out whatever it is she’s got in the works to get us home--Jak’s already made his decision anyways, right Jak?”

The teen looked up, startled for a moment, but nodded.

“I have to at least try. This may be the only chance we have of getting to Praxis.”

“What’s all this ‘we’ stuff? Ugh, fine. It never ends with you two,” Daxter rolled his eyes, wandering into the kitchen while muttering about being unfairly roped into things. Tawniey looked to Jak, who had a smile threatening to raise one corner of his mouth. She found it contagious.

Between the excited chattering and nervous predictions of the next day’s events, the hours flew by like seconds, and it was long past midnight when Tawniey and Daxter decided to peel themselves up off of the table and go to bed. Though the other two seemed to have talked themselves into exhaustion, as Jak lay curled under the blankets on the larger couch, sleep felt nearly impossible.

Morning came early for the group; there had been no alarms set, no agreed upon time, but all three began to stir within minutes of each other. Breakfast was seemingly calm, mostly silent, but there was a very palpable excited apprehension in the air. It wasn’t until Tawniey had locked the door behind her that they all began to converse, and by the time they’d made it halfway down the street they were almost talking over one another. Jak was still the quietest, but he was very aware that his verbal responses, even monosyllabic ones, were coming more readily. Doing their best to follow the instructions given to them the night previous, Jak and Daxter countered and corrected each other as they wound through the city, Tawniey making suggestions as the went. It wasn’t until an hour had passed that they reluctantly decided to split up, and on the third scheduled regrouping, the boys could hear Tawniey’s voice coming from just before a dingy, heavily graffitied alley.

Jak had to stop himself from gracelessly scrambling to the spot, and instead squared his shoulders and evenly marched forward to knock on the wall. To his surprise, however, the alley wasn’t empty. There was a blonde girl in an olive green shirt and rolled cut-off jeans stacking large wooden crates, and a lanky, heavily tattooed young man with russet dreadlocks and a deep scowl seemed to be directing her toward the North wall. Atop one of the tall stacks of crates was a young child in blue overalls, reaching toward the cane of an old man with a beard nearly as long as the bell sleeves of his tunic. They all seemed to notice at once that they were not alone, and as Jak watched the scene before him freeze, he realized his mouth was hanging open. 

Setting down the box she was holding and putting her hands on her hips, the blonde glared between Jak, Daxter, and Tawniey, and the tattooed man. Jak saw that they seemed to be in silent conversation, and fumbled to find his words as well.

“We’re looking for a guy named Torn.” he managed. The man had moved toward him now with movements more swift than Jak had expected for as unbalanced as his posture had seemed. He leaned in aggressively, looking him over a little too close for comfort, and Jak tried to hold his ground. 

“Um…are you…Torn?” he asked finally.

Daxter climbed back onto Jak’s shoulder as though to get a better look at the man as well. 

“Maybe this guy’s a mute, like you used to be.” He muttered to Jak as the man barked a gruff laugh. 

“New faces make me nervous.” he said in a low rasp. He prodded forcefully at Jak’s chest, through the center of the metal ring that clasped his pack as though it were a target. Jak’s fists clenched involuntarily, and he gritted his teeth as the man began to circle him. Jak took a few steps to counter, fighting himself to remain cool.

“Word is you’re out to join the fight for the city.” The man continued, a wild smirk running across his tattooed face. “You know, picking the wrong side could be…unhealthy.”

“We want to join your revolution,” Jak responded firmly, getting tired of having his personal space invaded. This didn’t seem to stop the man, but before Jak had the chance to tell him to back off, the blonde by the crates drew closer. She seemed ready to fight, and Jak wasn’t so certain he wouldn’t take the challenge if it came.

“Aspen did say we might get some people today, Torn,” she spoke to the other man coolly, her eyes never leaving the trio. “They look pretty wimpy, if you ask me.”

The man, who was apparently Torn after all, chuckled again.

“If you want to join something, why don’t you and your pet go join the circus?” he looked pointedly at Daxter, and Jak felt him shifting angrily on his shoulder. Before the ottsel could say whatever it was he took a breath for, however, Torn suddenly unsheathed a sharp, curved blade, and it glinted menacingly as he turned it in his hand, pulling his thumb against the back of the blade.

“Unless you got the fur for a really tough task?”  
Tawniey, who had been standing a little ways behind Jak until now, stepped forward, her voice coming through strong.

“We may not look like much, but we can handle anything you need us to do.”

Torn seemed to consider this, though he looked over at the blonde as if silently communicating his doubts.

“Those crates there are shipments of ammo and mods. You telling me any of you can use a gun?”

“I can,” Tawniey confirmed, sounding a little more excited than Jak would have expected.

“And him?” Torn jerked his chin in Jak’s direction.

“Well,” Tawniey started, looking at Jak. He thought he saw the resolve in her expression fading a little, and he wished he could back her up on this one, but if he were telling the truth, he couldn’t recall ever having used a gun. Based on what he’d seen of the KG, he certainly wasn’t familiar with the large, sleek models the city seemed to favor. He went over this in his head, realizing that even with no previous experience, he could feasibly learn in a short enough amount of time. Jak’s eyes focused back onto Torn when he realized Tawniey had actually listed one of his skills as ‘being able to jump very high’, and he decided he wasn’t going to be scrutinized like this anymore without making his case for himself. Stepping forward, Jak’s voice was gruff with irritation as he spoke.

“Look, we were told to come see you, and we’re more than willing to do what it takes to get to the Baron. So are you going to let us in, or do we have to find our own way?”

Torn’s expression fell to a cold neutral, and he turned away from Jak, seeming to be looking for an answer in the rest of his group by the pile of crates.

“Steal the Baron’s banner from the top of the Ruined Tower in Deadtown and bring it back to me,” he said at last, tossing the knife in his hand up in the air. It spiralled back downward, and Torn caught it skillfully as he looked back to smirk. 

“Then maybe we’ll talk.”

“Fine by me.” Jak said, turning on his heel and leading the other two back out to the streets. 

He wasn’t sure what he had expected. The man the night before, Aspen, he supposed, had made it seem as though the Underground would be willing-- eager, even-- to accept his help if he chose to give it. Torn, however, seemed to give the impression that he might not be interested in Jak’s assistance if he left the Baron himself hogtied on his stoop. Jak gritted his teeth indignantly when Tawniey’s voice rang softly from beside him.

“You’re walking a bit fast.” She said. “Do you know where we’re going?”

Admittedly, he didn’t. He shook his head and slowed to let her take the lead.

“The area called Deadtown is out past the wall. There’s a city gate near my apartment. Don’t worry, my pass has the right clearance...”

When they finally stopped before the gate, Jak had to stop a moment to take it in. It was a thick metal door four times his height and at least ten times as broad that had sunken into a pit at the end of the alley. The door was truly massive. Even the bolts on the frame were nearly the size of his head. 

Complex locking mechanisms whirred slowly to life as they approached, screeching with enough noise that Jak knew they must not open frequently. The door began to part from the center, revealing a metal chamber inside, and Jak began to wonder if the Metalheads or anything else could possibly be terrifying enough to warrant this kind of security. 

As they stepped inside, an automated voice greeted them. 

_“Now leaving city safe zone. Exit at your own risk.”_

The gate behind them had solidly closed before the one at the fore even began to open, but through the growing crack Jak could see exactly why the area was called Deadtown. It had clearly once held life, but every trace of civilization was in complete ruins. The paths were lined with cement platforms that might have once held houses, but all that was left of the ones nearest to them were chunks of rubble covered in thick layers of dust and broken glass, and the remains of charred support beams. Even the sand dunes that made up the walkways were an ashen sort of gray-- a far cry from the pink and yellow flecked beaches Jak remembered in Sandover village. 

As he stepped out into the sunlight, he noticed that what had appeared to be mud from a distance was actually murky water, and he thought he saw leeches writhing beneath the surface. Out past the farthest houses was the edge of Haven City’s wall, and it looked to be the only thing within Jak’s line of vision that was at all intact. The wall cleanly cut off, as though it were built that way, leaving an uncomfortable view of the ocean, and the wastelands that lined its edges.

“What happened here?” Jak murmured, taking it all in with a certain sense of apprehension.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Tawniey began, stepping over a fair sized puddle of the sludge to get to Jak, “from what I’ve heard around, there was a huge accident, but the only thing I’ve gotten for sure is it was burned a few years ago. And I can’t really ask, since it’s something everyone knows about; it’d draw more attention to myself than I’d like.”

Daxter quipped that Tawniey, by default, was weird enough to draw attention to herself anyways, but Jak saw something moving not too far in the distance and squinted up at it. Atop a precariously standing turret of stone and pipe was a red square of fabric, unfurling like a ghost in the silent, musty breeze. He thought how disgustingly unsurprised he was that Praxis would do something like this, as if claiming the graveyard of a landscape his victory, and felt his nose wrinkle in response.

“It’s up there,” Jak pointed, stopping the other two from bickering. They followed his finger up the tower, and Daxter snorted.

“That’s it? How hard was this ‘mission’ supposed to be? It’s even got stairs all the way to the top,” he bounded up onto Jak’s shoulder, bidding him forward. Watching their feet carefully, Jak and Tawniey took off at a brisk jog towards what used to be a wall, and with a few jumps, they were running the labyrinth of stone in all it’s twists and turns to their goal. 

Not fifteen minutes later, the trio realized the tower was not only farther than it looked, but the terrain grew more treacherous the closer they got. Some walls had completely collapsed into the swampy earth below, making too wide a chasm to jump, and too deep to climb down. Never mind that the things Jak had seen moving beneath the brown water had revealed themselves to be tadpole-like lurkers, and on at least two occasions had jumped up and tried to close in on the group. They spent more time fighting the creatures off, backtracking, and creating bridges out of dubiously solid planks of infrastructure than they did moving forward. When at last they came to a clear path to the tower, it felt as though hours had passed.

“You first, big guy,” Daxter whistled, staring up at the imposing structure. He gave an undignified yelp when Jak took a deep breath and leapt to the first large block along the tower’s side, scrambling for purchase. Tawniey was behind them in a minute, but they all stopped short when the ground beneath them gave a great shudder.

“We should be careful,” Tawniey said at last, gingerly craning her neck to peer over the side. bricks and mortar had crumbled away from the base of the block, powdering the land below.

“What was that you were saying about ‘easy missions’, Dax?” Jak grinned, looking at his friend. “Hang on tight.”

With another jump, Jak launched up and forward, grabbing hold of an exposed pipe sticking out of the tower’s exterior. In two graceful loops, he touched down on the next block, urging Tawniey to follow quickly. The redhead took hold of the bar as Jak had, but merely pushed her weight forward with her legs before chasing after him up the enormous spiral stairs. She had just begun to laughingly call him a show off when the block they had previously been standing on fell away completely, and before any of them had time to properly register what had happened, they knew instinctually they had to keep moving forward at all costs. 

They ran, jumped, and scrambled their way upwards, each step rattling the foundations beneath their feet, some merely shaking a brick or two loose, others sending the whole platform plummeting into the abyss. By the time they reached the top, they were all panting with adrenaline, staring back at the way they’d come in fascinated horror.

“There it is-- the flag.” Daxter said in mock reverence, hopping from Jak’s shoulder and gesturing to it with both hands.

In spite of himself, Jak was beaming. His heart was only just beginning to slow, and his breath becoming less heavy. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he felt alive. He hadn’t had chance or reason to appreciate the newfound breadth of his shoulders and strength of his body until he had been given room to run, jump, and climb again. Swinging from the makeshift pipes in the rubble had stretched muscles that had seemed to be dormantly tense for ages; he felt powerful.

As he reached out to take the pole of the flag, he and Daxter exchanged a silent glance, and he struck a pose as he ripped it from the ground below. He could hear Tawniey giggling from behind them as Daxter began to wiggle his rear victoriously, but a deep rumbling soon drowned it out. The ground beneath their feet was starting to crumble, and just as Jak had opened his mouth to shout a terrified warning, it gave way. 

Jak barely had time to register that he was falling, and he found himself instinctually gripping the flagpole tighter between his palms. Miraculously, an awning broke his fall, sending him tumbling toward a thick metal cable. He didn’t have to think before he unlatched his hold on one side of the pole, swinging it up over his head and hanging on again as he rocketed forward on his new makeshift zipline.

Somewhere in the distance he could hear Daxter shouting, but before he had time to wonder what was happening, he saw the ottsel whizzing past his face. 

As he reached the end of the cable, he let go with his left hand and let momentum carry him to a rough landing on a patch of sand not far below. Taking to his feet again was more difficult than he would have imagined, as his legs felt about as stable as pudding. It took a moment to return to his senses before he looked wildly around for Tawniey and Daxter. 

Daxter was pulling himself angrily from the sand where he seemed to have embedded himself face-first, and Tawniey was just closing in to land after dropping her legs from the cable and finally letting go with her hands. She stumbled forward, clutching her stomach as Daxter had finally righted himself and begun brushing down his fur with his paws. Jak thought for a moment that she’d been laughing, but upon seeing her expression, asked if she was doing alright.

“Didn’t land so good on the line,” she wheezed, waving his concern off.

“You’re telling _me!_ ” Daxter huffed, whipping around to look at her. “I swear, if you two hadn’t been so ‘fancy’ with your footwork, we could have avoided being dropped out of the sky like new-born Flut-fluts!”

There was a heavy pause after the ottsel finished speaking where Jak and Tawniey looked between him and each other before they suddenly burst into raucous laughter. Jak was pulling his hands to his own stomach as he watched Daxter’s face twitch up into an involuntary smile, and before they knew it, they all were helpless with mirth.

The walk back to the alley passed in significantly better spirits. Despite the danger of their task, and the dull soreness that was starting to set into his muscles, Jak felt a bounce in his step. Compared to the vacant and eerie silence of Deadtown, Haven seemed so chipper and bustling in the evening light. The conversation flowed so smoothly and easily as they recounted bits of their quest for the flag, and there was still a warmth and happiness on their faces as, at long last, they reached the graffitied wall again. 

Tawniey rapped firmly on the wall with her knuckles three times, and Jak watched as the whole of the wall started to shift. It slid open with a dull grinding noise, revealing a doorway that seemed to lead to a basement. Jak reached a hand up to his shoulder for Daxter to produce the bunched up flag for him, and he started off down the flight of stairs with Tawniey close behind.

The short steps dropped suddenly into a warm, if dimly lit bunker. Boxes and stacked beds lined the walls immediately within, and further towards the back was a mid-sized table, where the familiar, lanky silhouette of Torn sat hunched over a series of maps and notes. He glanced, up, his expression changing a few times as the trio walked proudly into the space. Jak dropped the flag onto the table, unsure if his own face was ready to settle on forced solemn dignity or split with smug, beaming triumph.

“You got the flag.” Torn said, his voice more confused than astonished. 

“Yep!” Daxter said loudly, hopping from Jak’s shoulder and onto the table. “What? Thought we couldn’t do it? We’re not the type you want to underestimate, buster. Trust me on that.”

Torn’s eyes were still locked on the red fabric in front of him as though he was half expecting it to move. Jak was suddenly aware that he’d hoped for a little more fanfare, and now that it wasn’t coming, his excitement was waning. Torn had said to simply get the flag, right? It couldn’t be that they messed up the mission. They worked too hard, nearly died, and for all Torn was acting, Jak was getting the distinct impression that he might have been happier if that had been the case. His brow was descending into a bitter frown, and as he opened his mouth to tell the great and stoic leader of the Underground to quit jerking them around, the man suddenly stood, a tight smirk on his tattooed face.

“Yeah,” he said, bringing a hand to his chin before finally meeting Jak’s eyes, “I guess you guys are in.”

Torn stepped around the table, striding to a series of small lockers against the wall to his left.

“You’re going to need these to stay in touch.” 

He tossed a small device to each Jak and Tawniey. Jak caught it against his stomach and looked it over. It appeared to be an access pass like the ones that he had seen Tawniey and Daxter use. He flipped it open to see a blank name slot and a long list of clearances. Judging by the grin on Tawniey’s face, these were clearances that were new to her as well. Jak shut the pass again and stowed it in the pouch at his hip. 

“If you hold the center button, it’ll connect you to someone here at the underground. _Don’t use it._ We’ll call you if we’ve got something for you to do.” Torn said. 

“Hey!” Daxter exclaimed, “What about me? Don’t I get a cool access pass?”

 

“Don’t push your luck.” Torn seethed. 

“It’s fine, Dax,” Jak quickly interjected. “You’ll be with me most of the time anyway, right?”

He offered out his arm as he spoke. Jak knew that he was right, but he was in no mood to argue, and Torn seemed unlikely to budge. Daxter grumbled his agreement and climbed begrudgingly back onto Jak’s shoulder. 

“When do you think we’ll start?” Tawniey asked eagerly, tucking her own pass away as well.

“No idea, but I can assure you, it’ll happen a lot faster if you all get out of my hair.” Torn replied, picking a bottle from the shelves at the back and taking his seat again. “I’m busy.”

Jak rolled his eyes as he turned away from the table and tilted his head toward the door. After Tawniey’s silent nod of approval, they unceremoniously took to the streets. 

The walk back was quiet, but not unpleasantly so, and Jak found himself maybe even grateful for it as he realized how tired of the day he’d become. The apartment was warm and familiar, and the group all but collapsed onto the nearest convenient surface as the rest of the night wore on in a tentative calm. By the time a late dinner was started, the energy had picked up a little, but most of it came from Tawniey and Daxter rehashing the collapse of the tower, and Jak was content to listen and nod along when appropriate. He excused himself early to wash up before bed, and as he settled into the blankets, Torn’s words echoed through his mind.

Even through the bitterness he still felt toward the man for his ingratitude and disinterest, Jak still found himself dwelling on the day’s events pleasantly. As he stared out through the dark apartment, toward the light of Haven’s streets, Jak absently flipped his access pass open and shut in quiet anticipation of the moment it would buzz and call him to action.


	6. Chapter 6

By the fifth day of watching Jak pace around the apartment, jumping at even the most obvious of noises to check his access pass, Tawniey knew she had to intervene. As luck would have it, all it took was a pointedly placed schedule of the upcoming class 3 races for Jak to suggest that they find something in the city to do. A quick talk with Keira provided them with the tickets, and after promising to stop back and chat after the race, the three were taking their seats among the cheering spectators.

The effect of the stadium's atmosphere was immediate. There was something about the roar of the crowd, the bright lights, and the large floating screens that drowned out all thought. Jak had visibly relaxed as well, and was now tossing bits of popcorn and racing Daxter to catch them in his mouth.

Tawniey caught herself grinning as she watched them and quickly turned her attention to the large overhead screen where the racers were taking their positions. The camera panned over each competitor from various angles, displaying information and sponsor logos before finally settling on their face. A second screen was being updated with expected payouts estimated for bets on each racer.

"You know what?" Daxter mused. "I take back what I said. If I had the orbs, I'd place a bet. Look at those numbers rolling."

"You'd lose them all." Jak teased.

"Nuh-uh." Daxter replied. "You just gotta be smart. You gotta trust your instincts. Use your intuition. I mean, look at the ranks. #43 seems like a safe bet."

"#43?" Tawniey repeated, perking up. "Flint is racing today?"

As if on cue, the last racer walked his bike to the starting line. Even from so great a distance, Tawniey recognized him immediately; his white hair shone starkly against the tan of his skin and dark clothes, and the comparatively straight posture of his back made him seem much taller than he was. He waved enthusiastically at the crowd before sliding a pair of red and yellow goggles securely over his eyes.

Tawniey yelled excitedly, waving her own arms at Flint, though she knew he wouldn’t be able to see her from where he stood. The robotic sound of a woman’s voice cascaded down into the arena from the speakers.

“Racers, take your mark.”

The people at the start line all mounted their zoomers in a single fluid motion, some settling in comfortably, others already looking grim and white-knuckled. 

“Start your engines.”

The crowd was absolutely restless now, a tangible building of energy sparking through the air as the zoomers revved to life below. The large screens had switched from the racers’ stats to a stylized number three, beeping loudly while the voice began the count down.

“Three……two……one……”

On the word ‘go’, the stadium erupted. Tawniey, like many of the people around her, stood in order to see the competitors zip down the straight-away before taking the first wide turn into the more difficult section of the track. She glanced at Jak who had apparently caught on, and was straining to see around the overzealous group of cheering fans beside them on the benches. The screens blinked again, now showing the inside of a long stretch of tunnel as the racers disappeared into the mouth of it one by one.

“So,” Jak yelled over the din, “Flint’s who you were talking about with Keira that night at the bar?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” Tawniey shouted back, amazed that he’d remembered. She suddenly got an idea, and grinned widely at the thought.

“Do you want to meet him?”

There was another uproarious cheer when the first few racers exited the tunnel, Flint in close third.

“What?” Jak yelled, seeming unable to decide if he wanted to focus on Tawniey or the race.

“I said, ‘do you want to meet him’! He’ll probably go to Keira after the race is over. I figured if he does, we were gonna meet up anyway. I could introduce you!”

One of the racers, number ‘28’, picked up an eco orb on the track and blasted forward, bumping their placement from fifth to third after toppling the person in fourth. Tawniey cursed.

“Aw dammit, that was a cheap shot, come on!”

Daxter seemed to agree, his fur bristling slightly as he called out insults to the driver. He wasn’t the only one, as parts of the crowd booed, though even more of them only cheered harder, as if enjoying the accident. Jak laughed nervously, bringing Tawniey’s attention back to him.

“Bit of a blood sport, isn’t it?”

“That’s not even the worst I’ve seen,” Tawniey nodded. She felt a little strange, realizing the answer likely made her out to be in favor of the violence inherent in the races. She supposed that over time, it was possible she’d simply gotten used to it, but Jak wouldn’t be. She suddenly wondered if he was fine with being here.

“You okay?” she asked seriously, but was greeted with the biggest smile she’d seen on Jak’s face in days. His eyes sparkled with life, and he nodded firmly before giving his full attention back to the screen, which showed the aggressive racer running neck-and-neck with Flint for second place. They drew closer and closer alongside his zoomer and looked to be about ready to ram him, but no sooner than they leaned their zoomer toward his, Flint sped ahead in a blur of blue eco.

Tawniey exhaled a heavy breath she hadn’t realized was caught in her lungs. That was too close. At least Jak seemed to still be having fun—his eyes were transfixed between the track and the screens.

Before long, the racers were in the second to last lap, and the remaining contestants had been whittled down by three. Two had simply spun out, but the third had been bulldozed by #28 who seemed to be unrelenting in their pursuit of first. No penalty had been issued, however, and the crowd was in fits over it in some capacity or another; some screaming for an official call, others yelling for more carnage. Tawniey was keeping a constant eye on the screens’ place tracker, switching between hopeful muttering and yelling out encouragement to Flint. He was now in first, but a mere three seconds behind was #28, who’d been using the eco boosts to catch up.

Tawniey bit her lip. The final turn was just just a few hundred feet away and #28 was gaining fast. She swore loudly as she watched the two on the first place camera and the racer overtook Flint, but from the head-on view she could see he was still grinning. 

As they took to the final turn and raced toward the finish line, Tawniey suddenly understood why. With #28’s speed, they couldn’t slow quickly enough to take the turn. There was a moment where the crowd went wild— it appeared #28 had won— but as they scrambled to lean their bike enough to make the turn, they rose high up onto the side and lost their balance. The zoomer, now free of it’s rider, flew up and exploded with a terrible zap as it hit the eco barrier at the top of the track.

As Flint crossed the finish line a loud buzzer sounded. The whole of the crowd seemed to take to their feet in a single motion. Tawniey was absolutely screaming with joy and excitement, and even through the deafening roar of the crowd, she could hear Jak’s voice belting just as loudly as her own. Daxter was jumping on his shoulder, cupping one hand around his mouth to shout and obscenely gesturing to the fallen driver with the other.

“And the qualifying racer is—” A booming computerized voice sounded over the crowd, “Flint, from Hagai Racing!”

Tawniey cheered even louder than before, waving her arms wildly in hopes of catching Flint’s attention as he dismounted his zoomer and looked over the crowd. She could see the glint of the trophy as it was lowered dramatically on a thin line from above, and grinned as he received it eagerly, raising it to the crowd. After a few theatrical bows, he walked his bike out into the tunnel to the side of the track and disappeared from sight. 

A great deal of people were already starting to exit the stadium, flooding out into the hallways and down the stairs to the exits or the collection booths to claim their winnings. Jak gestured to indicate that Tawniey should lead them out as well, and they began the slow weaving shuffle toward the rear exits. 

When they finally reached the garage again, Keira was nowhere to be seen, so they followed the sound of voices through winding hallways of cubicles and into a large open room. It had a long table covered with plates of varying snacks and an urn of coffee towards the middle. The walls were lined with curved leather couches that circled smaller tables, and sitting in one of the booths talking to Keira and a hoard of other fans and racers, was Flint. Tawniey called out for the two over the noise, and the moment Flint’s large grey eyes met hers, he broke into a wide grin.

With barely more than a rushed “‘scuse me” to the small crowd, Flint had gotten up and squeezed his way through. Keira was slower to stand, though she seemed equally happy to see Tawniey and Jak, and she began apologizing to the others before politely turning them towards the door. Flint and Tawniey were just finishing their hugged hellos by the time Keira had joined them.

“Glad you could make it! I was wondering if you’d be here today,” the racer said brightly, pulling away.

“Finally! I was beginning to worry he was going to rehash the entire race just to brag until you showed up,” Keira teased, crossing her arms and staring pointedly at Flint.

Flint laughed off the comment and had turned to offer his hand to Jak when suddenly his eyes grew wide. 

“You have a _pet ottsel?_ ” he gasped. Before anyone could answer, he’d scooped Daxter up and into a hug, scratching and petting him between the ears with obvious glee.

“Do you mind if I hold it? He’s so _soft_ —it is a he, right?—there aren’t too many of these around the city anymore, where did you even find—”

Tawniey could see both Jak and Keira staring open-mouthed in the same combination of abject horror, guilt, and amusement, and while Keira appeared to be reaching halfheartedly as though to stop him, Tawniey decided to step in.

“Flint,” Tawniey addressed him firmly, stifling a laugh in spite of the warning, but as she started to tell him to release Daxter, the flustered ottsel pushed himself forcefully from Flint’s chest.

“ _Put me down!!_ ”

The shock on Flint’s face was enough to make even Jak snort briefly before making an effort to collect himself. Tawniey tried to think of something to say, watching Daxter wiggle out of Flint’s hands and drop to the floor before scurrying back up to Jak’s shoulder.

“H-He talked…”

“Damn right, I did!” Daxter shot back, still aggressively smoothing his fur back into place. “I’ve been threatened with skinning, the butcher, and even pest control, but no one gets their snuggles on me!”

“Hey, take it easy Dax,” Jak smiled sympathetically at his friend, “he didn’t know, no harm done.”

“Easy for you to say! You didn’t just get your meticulously groomed self all ruffled and crushed.”

Flint looked flabbergasted from the ottsel to everyone else. Tawniey cleared her throat, placing a tentative hand on Flint’s shoulder.

“Flint, that’s not Jak’s pet, that’s Daxter. I told you about Daxter, remember?”

“This...is Daxter?” he repeated, weakly pointing in awe. “I thought….Daxter’s an ottsel? I guess I just assumed…. wow.”

“It’s a long story.” Keira said quickly.

Flint still looked to be trying to form words as he reconciled the onslaught of new information and shattered expectations.

“Sorry ‘bout that.” Flint said sheepishly to Daxter.

“Not sorry enough!” Daxter shot back.

“That’s fair.” Flint replied, still sounding a bit shaken. Tawniey watched as he attempted to raise his hand to offer a handshake to Daxter, but Daxter scurried to Jak’s opposite shoulder as though afraid that Flint might try to pick him up again. Flint instead moved to rub awkwardly at his own neck. “Well, I’m Flint. It’s nice to meet you...” 

“And this is Jak,” Tawniey started, gesturing to him. 

Flint’s face changed indiscernibly as he looked from Jak back to Tawniey. “You’re Jak!” he said finally, a broad grin creeping onto his face as he met Jak’s eye again. He reached out his hand which Jak received and firmly shook. “ _The_ Jak! Tawniey’s told me all sorts of stories. It’s so good to finally meet you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Daxter said, standing up straight and leaning on Jak’s head as an armrest. “I’ll guarantee that Tawniey left out all the good parts of those stories.” 

“I’m sure they were honest at least.” Keira laughed, causing Daxter’s smug grin to turn into a scowl.

Despite the confusion and sudden drop in the mood, Flint seemed to be regaining his footing in the conversation, much to Tawniey’s relief. She did note that after they had all picked out snacks and some coffee from the table, Daxter made a point of sitting on the shoulder farthest from Flint while still being able to grab at Jak’s plate; but Flint was talking with Jak, asking all kinds of questions, and it appeared that the two would get along just fine. Tawniey mentioned that Jak was particularly enthralled with the race, and Flint had the good grace to blush a little before thanking them.

“You interested in racing?” Flint asked, taking a bite from a cracker with cheese, “or are you a mechanics junkie like Keira?”

“Nah, that stuff’s definitely way over my head,” Jak waved off. “Keira’s been the one working on all the transportation since we were kids.”

“Really?” Flint asked with more surprise than was necessary, earning him a light punch on the arm from Keira. Tawniey shook her head, smiling in spite of herself, before turning to Jak.

“Maybe you can sucker Flint into showing you around the track sometime.”

“Actually,” Keira said, her eyes widening in sudden realization, “Jak, what do you think of trying out the new JET-board i’ve been been working on?”

Keira took another sip of her coffee before continuing when she was met with wide eyed stares.

“Seriously! Our team’s not very big yet—it’s just Flint and a handful of other newbies. If you think you’d like to give racing a try, I can get you practiced and signed up for next season. The track’s booked pretty full for a while, but until we can get you penciled in, the Stadium Course would be a great start!”

“I didn’t know you had a JET-board custom in the works,” Flint said, drinking from his own coffee.

“That’s because I trust you with it about as far as I can throw you,” Keira retorted playfully. “What d’you say, Jak?”

Tawniey looked back to Jak and he seemed to be considering it. She cleared her throat, giving him a gentle nudge with her elbow.

“Hey, you _were_ having a good time today. Maybe this could be a good way to get rid of some of that stress?”

At the very least, it would make a good distraction, Tawniey thought. Even if the Underground never got back to them, perhaps racing could be the thing to help Jak out of his funk. In time, it might even become a fun hobby, just until they could find their way home. Before she could open her mouth to sell the point further, Jak seemed to notice that everyone else was looking expectantly at him as well, and he turned to Daxter.

“Up for some more fun, Dax?”

“Bring it on!” Daxter replied, pumping his fist in the air exuberantly.

With that, Jak stood and Keira pointed them down the hallway and out to the course. Flint picked up a remote from a nearby coffee table and clicked a button that made the large screen on the side of the wall flash back to life. It quickly changed from a view of the now-empty race track to an aerial camera in the stadium JET-course where a distant figure seemed to be approaching behind tinted glass. 

“So, now I’ve finally met the famous Jak and Daxter.” Flint started up again, replacing the remote. “And I only made half a fool of myself.” 

“You were fine.” Tawniey reassured him as Keira sat back down on the couch. 

“But, more seriously, though…” Flint continued, “last I knew he was locked up in the fortress. Two years of watching, then you disappear for a few weeks and he’s free? How’d you manage to get him out?” 

“Wait, what?” Keira cut in. 

There was a pause. Tawniey bit her tongue and felt her face grow hot, suddenly realizing what a predicament she had placed herself in. Flint seemed to pick up on the sudden tension quickly and quietly asked if he’d said something wrong.

“Two years?” Keira asked, incredulously. “You knew where he was for two years, and didn’t say a word to me?”

Tawniey stammered as she tried to find her apology. 

“I’m really sorry, Keira, but it was a big secret.”

“Not big enough to keep from Flint, apparently.”

Now Flint was muttering something to himself about being sure he had said something wrong. Tawniey took a deep breath and tried to meet Keira’s eye. 

“No, but Flint didn’t know Jak.” She replied. “I knew it would worry you. It was a lot to know. The day we arrived, I got shot—”

 

“You got _shot??_ ” Keira interrupted, her jaw dropping in horror. 

“No! Yes—okay, but I’m fine now.” Tawniey recovered hastily. “Kendryk found me, and— anyway, Jak got nabbed, Daxter ran off somewhere…I didn’t know if either of them were even _alive_ , or if they’d been left for dead like I was, but when I found you again you were so sure that they’d made lives for themselves, like we had, and that we all just kept missing each other…Daxter did, so you weren’t that far off, I just...I didn’t think you needed to know about Jak until I knew for sure what happened to him. You didn’t need the burden.”

Keira’s face had fallen into a hurt sort of scowl. Her eyebrows were knit together as she turned away from the group and folded her arms, and Tawniey felt another pang of guilt drop into her stomach. Her eyes settled onto the large screen where they could see Jak testing out a flip on a long ramp and she was surprised when after a moment, Keira broke the silence.

“Well, go on. Tell him how you and Daxter got him out.” she said. 

Tawniey hesitated only a moment more before she started from running into Daxter and crawling through the vents, rehashing all the way up to Jak passing out after falling from the ventilation window. Flint stared at her in wide-eyed amazement, Keira seeming less thrilled but equally in shock. Tawniey apologized for glossing over the facts in the bar again, reiterating that she simply didn’t want to worry Keira more than necessary, but no sooner than when Keira’s expression softened and she opened her mouth to reply, Flint seemed to finally come out of his amazed stupor.

“So those reports on the news machines weren’t exaggerating, then?” he asked.

“Afraid not,” Tawniey confirmed. “Jak hasn’t said much about it but….I don’t know, he doesn’t seem too happy with the whole situation, even being out of that cell.”

“Well apart from being the most wanted person on the Baron’s list right now, what’s to not be happy about?” 

Tawniey looked to her friend in confusion, Keira’s expression also going tight. Flint finished the dregs of his coffee before smiling widely, like he might laugh at how obvious his meaning had been.

“The Guard haven’t exactly been hot on his heels, and I’d bet this trophy it’s cos they don’t want to. I didn’t know you could channel dark eco, but do you know how _strong_ he’s gotta be if he slashed through their armor? And an entire squad by himself! Praxis may have set up this secret experiment whatever-it-is to get a supersoldier, but Jak’s more than he could ever handle! He’s probably just having a tough time letting it sink in that he’s totally untouchable now.”

“I never thought about it like that...” Tawniey hummed, dumbfounded. Was it possible all the brooding, all the anxious excitement over being called to action by the Underground had been at least in part because of the desire to test himself? He hated the Baron, that much was clear, but maybe he could use his new powers for something bigger than revenge…

Her thoughts were interrupted when Keira’s voice broke in, cracking with rage.

“Of course you didn’t--it’s a terrible way to think!”

Keira stood with fists clenched, staring Tawniey and Flint down.

“I can’t believe you two! You can’t channel dark eco. No one can. It isn’t something ‘cool’ or ‘powerful’, it’s a _death sentence_.” 

“He looks alive enough to me.” Flint said, rising too. “What’s your problem?”

“I don’t _have_ a problem,” Keira’s voice was low now, sounding on the verge of tears. She reared up to say something else but stopped, let out a final growl of disgust, and stormed away, slamming the door behind her as she left. Flint reeled, flopping back onto the bench cushions.

“Seriously, what the hell was that?”

Tawniey sighed, getting up slowly.

“Sorry Flint--I think you’d better stay here for a bit, keep an eye on Jak and Daxter for me, but I’m going to go make sure she’s okay.”

“Fine by me,” Flint breathed, slumping a little in his seat. Tawniey made a mental note to take him out for lunch sometime this week to talk things over, but for now Keira was her priority. It didn’t take walking very far down the halls to find Keira sitting in her garage cubicle, her face buried in her hands. Tawniey sighed, stepping quietly into the space and making a seat for herself on a large toolbox.

“Talk to me?”

The only response she received was a huff and a glance, so Tawniey tried again.

“Look, I’m sorry about telling Flint and not you—”

“I don’t care about that.” Keira sighed. When Tawniey quirked an eyebrow in response, Keira continued. “Alright, I still care, but you did what you had to. I get that.”

“Then what is it?” Tawniey urged.

There was a pause in which Tawniey was almost certain that Keira was about to start sobbing, but instead, she simply took a deep breath and gripped hard at the knee of her pants. 

“I’m worried about Jak.” Keira said finally. “I know you were too. Flint’s not, but he should be. I should probably apologize later for blowing up at him but...he just doesn’t get this. He doesn’t know what it can do. That stuff is toxic. It kills everyone it touches, and everyone’s walking around like things are fine. Like this is cool, even...You _saw_ the Acheron sages. For all the power it gave them, for as long as they lasted, it still killed them in the end, but not before it corrupted them from the inside out.”

Tawniey had the urge to correct her that, in all technicality, _they_ had been the sages’ downfall, but the pain on Keira’s face made her hold her tongue. To be fair, it wasn’t as though the sages were a picture of health. Gol’s voice had been a haunting and perpetual death rattle.

“But Daxter survived.” She replied. “I mean, he’s not keen on being fuzzy, but he survived.”

“Daxter was an anomaly. Daxter is an anomaly.” Keira retorted, putting a hand to her forehead. 

“Look,” Tawniey said, after a moment. “I know you’re worried, but there’s not a lot we can do. Maybe Flint has a point. Jak was always good at channeling eco. Maybe whatever they did in that awful project actually worked. Maybe he’s healing. If it’s gone on for years and he’s still okay…maybe he’ll be alright.”

“It’s not that simple.” Keira countered. “It takes your mind like it takes your body. You get aggressive, angry—violent at times. No matter what powers he may have gotten, no matter how good at channeling Jak is—the signs are all there. You can see how pale he is. He’s always angry. You’ve said he gets violent—he’s _killed_ people, Tawniey!”

For a moment, Tawniey faltered. Jak had killed people, that was undebatable. She knew that she could argue that the guards Jak had killed were ready to kill them first if given the chance, but as the memory of Jak’s face, animalistically snarling, paled to gray even in the red warning lights crept back into her mind, she hesitated. 

“Even if his body survives it, his _mind_ is losing.” Keira said firmly, interrupting Tawniey’s thoughts. “I’m trying my best to support him, but…”

“Well,” Tawniey replied quietly. “That’s all you can do. That’s all either of us can do. I haven’t seen him transform since that day. We just have to trust that that was it, and everything will work out. We don’t really have any choice.”

 

For a moment they both sat in silence, the weight of the conversation settling heavily in the room. Tawniey wished more than anything that there was something left to say, or some other way to reassure her, but there wasn’t. Keira had every right to be scared. Nothing about the situation they found themselves in after the trip through the rift could be classified as normal, and she knew that Keira had fought through most of that alone without a second thought. When Tawniey had finally found her at the Stadium, she talked endlessly about reuniting with her father, Jak, and Daxter too so that they could piece together what they’d lost. Now the reunion she had seemed to look forward to the most was being taken from her as well. 

Tawniey stood up and looked back to Keira, who was now fiddling with a loose bolt as she stared at the floor. 

“Do you want to come back to the table?” Tawniey offered hopefully.

“I think I’ll stay here.” Keira replied. 

Tawniey nodded. She wasn’t certain what it was, but something in Keira’s tone told her that she’d be alright eventually. Excusing herself with a final reassurance that if Keira ever needed anything she would be there for her, Tawniey stepped out and made her way back through the hall. For such a cheerful outing, the day had been heavier than she would have ever guessed, and it sent her thoughts tumbling around in her head. Regardless of whether Flint’s rationale held any truth, she knew it would do no good to worry, but if Keira was right, just what exactly was to become of Jak?


End file.
